The data centers that Vice Prime Minister Aleksandar Nikoloski announced as an opportunity for significant foreign investment are still far from concrete works on the ground, although he also announced legal changes for their faster construction.
However, according to the Minister of Digital Transformation Stefan Andonovskihe has already talked to a dozen global companies that show interest in investing in large data centers, and two of them have entered a more advanced stage of negotiations.
But as he says to “Sloboden Pechat”, these are not famous brands such as “Google” or “Microsoft”, “Amazon”, but rather investment funds that invest in construction and then rent them to large companies.
– Some of them can build for “Nvidia” and some for “Google”. We have signed memoranda of cooperation with some of them, and therefore we are thinking about a change in the legal regulation that does not refer to the reduction of construction conditions, but how to facilitate infrastructure intended for data centers. The discussion goes in two directions: one is how to use space in the TIRZs, because now the construction of data centers is not allowed there because they imply the sale of services, not goods, which is what the development zones are intended for. The second direction is how to facilitate the procedures for zoning, for investment planning, for changing urban plans. But all that is in the thinking stage. We do not have a ready-made text that would be in the government procedure – admits the Minister of Digital Transformation Stefan Andonovski.
Apart from attracting foreign companies and foreign data centers, according to Andonovski, a feasibility study is in the final stage for the construction of a state data center that would be built either independently by the state or on the basis of a public-private partnership.
Referring to several remarks that appeared in the public about the negative implications of the work of such data centers, Andonovski assures that in order not to end up in a situation like in the USA, where large data centers were opened in urban areas, in our country they would be positioned outside urban areas so that there would be no noise and environmental pollution.
According to him, the Development Zones are very manageable because they have a lot of unused space, they have good infrastructure, such as roads, fiber optics, cable brought to the positions, drainage, supply, so they are infrastructurally ready to a good extent, and not all of them are fully used. Also important are the transversal electricity and optical cable, with which, as Andonovski says, we are well connected. It is important to guarantee the stability of the network, because every data center requires two or even three sides of power supply and cable optics.
– Macedonia has a very good connection with superfast internet, which means it has a good optical infrastructure. Apart from the private investments in the optical infrastructure, MEPSO as a state company for electric transmission system has also set up its own optical network which is not used too much, which means we have a good potential capacity with fiber optics, says Andonovski.
As for the remarks about whether Macedonia will have enough electricity to power these data centers, since it often imports electricity, the minister admits that these data centers are big consumers of electricity. But, he says, they can draw that electricity from combined sources, as they do in Croatia and Slovenia. First, they install photovoltaics on the roofs of these warehouse spaces for part of the necessary electricity that is produced during the day and in the summer period, and part of that necessary electricity is obtained from biogas plants (Croatia).
– Otherwise, these private investors buy electricity on the open market, which means that the price of electricity will have to be included in the price of the investment. We will not subsidize that electricity price for any investor – Andonovski is categorical.
The minister presented similar combined solutions for the cooling problem.
– Sometimes in public we are negative about every possibility and idea. It is no coincidence that the EU is trying to invest in AI factories. This is because this is where the potential for development lies. To bring high technologies and to employ people who will work on such technologies.
We are not in a hurry, we are just measuring our strength. We need one to two such data centers to see how much as a country we can withstand this type of investment – says Andonovski.
According to him, the investment of a data center with a power of 15 megawatts is one hundred million euros, which means that about 300 employees will be involved in the construction process and about 80 in the process of operationalizing the centers. A good part of them are highly educated personnel that we already have in large factories, and a huge number of IT engineers already work for foreign companies, which means that they will do well in this business as well.
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