Suggestions : Data Centre Policy of Karnataka

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Suggestions : Data Centre Policy of Karnataka

Jayakumar Selvaraj

@Jayakumar

August 2, 2021

Public Policy

276

Karnataka is considering adopting a Data Centre Policy for the State. In an interaction organised the Govt of Karnataka & NASSCOM leading industry players made important suggestions to make the State an attractive destination for Data Centres. Based on the inputs from the industry, NASSCOM made the following suggestions.

Land

Data Centres needs suitable land that are conducive for their establishment. The factors that are considered for choosing the site for a Data Centre are listed below.

Land elevation: A Data Centre located in a low-lying area is prone to risk of flooding. So, land elevation based on 100-year flood plain data should be considered to assess the suitability of the land parcel for hosting a data Centre.
Air quality: The air inside Data Centres should meet certain standards in terms of its sulphur content and concentration of Particulate Matter. Sulphur being a corrosive material could lead to corrosion of the equipment, and because it is also a conductive material, could lead to short-circuit, damaging equipment.
Seismic zone: To minimise risk from earthquake, data Centres should ideally be located in in areas which fall under seismic zone 4 or below. If the data Centres are located in zones with a higher rating, the buildings would require installation of snubbers (and other materials) to arrest shocks, which will lead to increase in capital cost.
Electricity lines: Significant separation from High Tension Electricity lines, is required to minimise the impact of Electro Magnetic Fields generated by the lines. For certain equipment used in Data Centres, the permissible limit is close to 3.7 Microtesla [µT] / 37 Milligauss [mG]. Breach of this limit can impact functioning of these equipment.
Distance from other establishments: Significant separation and distance from military establishments should be considered to avoid the disruption in connectivity due to jammers installed in military establishments. Further, given that Data Centers use generators when required the noise created by of disturbance for establishments nearby, and therefore, Data Centres do not prefer to be located in residential areas or malls. Areas that host IT companies is over other polluting industrial areas.
Flight Path: Data Centres should not be built under a flight path, to minimise risk that emanate from air crash. So, existing flight paths and future paths needs to be taken into consideration.

Some of the other considerations with respect to land are listed below.

Land parcels of 5-15 acres required for a typical co-location Data Centre.
The land parcels near the city are preferred for the following two reasons.
- To reduce latency for the users in urban centers like Bangalore
- To get highly skilled technicians for repair in short notice during breakdown
Clear ownership of land with no past liability attached.
Companies prefer to buy land, over leasing. This is because customers of co-location data centres would lease space which are owned by the co-location company.

Power

Data Centres operate round the clock and their customer contracts, require them to be functional upto 99.995% of time. To meet this target, data Centres require uninterrupted supply of power.

Further, in an effort to be environment friendly, some companies have made commitments to use renewable energy (RE) to meet a part of their power requirement, which in some cases, is as high as 80%. Though there is an open access system which allows large consumers to buy power directly from generation companies, distribution companies have put in various restrictions with regards to the contracted capacities of the RE, or banking of RE for use during peak periods, which restrict the ability of CSPs to draw 100 %RE to run their data Centres.

In this context, we suggest the following.

To provide reliable power supply, power connections should be provided from two different substations to ensure that at least one is functional when the other faces any breakdown.
Allow Data Centers to consume 100% of the RE procured directly from power producers through the open access system.
To ensure that cost of power should be competitive, there is a need to ensure that the wheeling charges and banking charges are not very high.

Building Norms

Given that Data Centre buildings are primarily designed to host equipment, with limited human entry or movement, the building norms of IT or commercial buildings are not suitable.

Therefore, we suggest the state to have independent building norms for Data Centres, as they have certain unique requirements. Some of these unique requirements are listed below.

G+4 structure to house Diesel Gensets
Up to 6.5m slab to slab height without any implication on the FSI
Chiller platform on terrace, up to 3.5m height, to store chillers.
Exemption from minimum car park requirement or car parking requirement to be made proportionate to the office/admin space in the Data Centre building (and not the entire building)
Relaxation on maximum land coverage for construction, at least 60%
Fencing wall of 3.5 m be allowed
Relaxation on reserved green area
Allow usage of use dry gas suppression systems (instead of water sprinkler systems)

Connectivity

The business model of Data Centres and Cloud Service Provider is to build upon a very reliable network, with 99.999% probability of availability. However, frequent digging of roads due to construction work and lack of coordination between govt. agencies poses a continuous threat of cable breaks.

Therefore, we suggest the following.

Adopt A Dial Before You Dig Policy (DBYDP), which would allow authorities responsible for carrying out construction work to access information about the underlying network infrastructure before digging.
Create Common Service Ducts and utility corridors in all new cities as well as in road projects.

Ease of Doing Business

About 20 different approvals are required from the state governments, before a Data Centre can start operations. There is a need to prevent any delay in these clearances. Therefore, we suggest introduction of a single window enabled deemed approval system for statutory clearances, with specified timelines for clearances.

Fiscal incentives

New investments by Data Centers can be encouraged by providing certain fiscal incentives. Other states offer benefits like SGST reimburesment, capital subsidy, reimbursement of interest cost, etc.

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Jayakumar Selvaraj

Jayakumar