Israeli renewable energy company Enlight Renewables has won an Israel Land Authority tender to develop an integrated data center and renewable energy complex in Ashalim, southern Israel.
Enlight plans to invest up to $1.1 billion in the project, which will be built on a 50-acre site. The renewable energy complex will comprise a solar and energy storage facility that will be integrated within the data center complex.
According to the company, the complex will feature a 100MW AC hourly consumption capacity. Further details on the data center were not shared.
Commenting on the announcement, Gilad Peled, general manager of Enlight MENA said: “Winning this tender will allow us to leverage our expertise in renewable energy and lead a national effort to develop data centers in southern Israel. This represents both an economic growth engine as well as a solution to the challenges and costs of electricity production and transmission into the country’s central region.”
Ashalim is home to the Ashalim Solar Complex, one of the largest renewable projects in the country. The complex has a total installed capacity of 312MW. This includes two 121MW solar thermal plants (Megalim and Negev) and a 30MW photovoltaic plant. It is owned by renewable energy firm EDF Renewables.
As a result, the region already has existing high-voltage transmission and communication networks, which Enlight says offer an ideal solution for large-scale data centers.
Enlight was founded in 2008. It develops and operates solar, wind, and energy storage systems. It has 3GW of operational renewable assets across the US, Israel, and ten European countries.
There have been several major announcements within the Israeli data center market over recent months. In January, Nvidia revealed it was developing a 30MW data center close to the Elyakim Interchange near Yokne’am, in the north of the country.
The company reportedly aims to invest $500 million in the facility, which will host Blackwell GPUs to serve its local R&D teams.
