The telecoms company Tet has planned to invest more than 30 million euros in a new data center, Latvian Radio reported.

Data security and data availability are major challenges for the technology industry today. That is why Tet will build a new data center in Salaspils, with a focus on innovative technologies and cyber security solutions. Edgars Grandāns, Tet’s Commercial Director, pointed out that currently, 70% of Tet’s turnover comes from export markets, the largest of which is Ukraine, where the company also services part of the country’s critical infrastructure.

“By nature, these complex cloud computing solutions involve a lot of computing power and the ability to scale. For example, offering a customer significantly more capacity in a short period of time and then scaling it back, etc. Secondly, high capacity is usually associated with high power consumption, and we will provide significantly more capacity in this data center than what we have historically offered in recent years. Given that there is this large computing capacity, we also need to cool these facilities more efficiently. Rather than cooling the air in the entire data center, we will be cooling the equipment in certain sectors using different cooling techniques,” Grandans explained.

The innovative method planned to cool equipment is liquid cooling. The heat will be transferred to the residents of Salaspils for consumption.

Ina Bērziņa-Veita, Member of the Board of Salaspils Heat and President of the Latvian Association of Heating Companies, noted that the energy generated in cooperation with Tet will account for about 7% of the total heat consumption in Salaspils. This will reduce the share of currently used wood chips or gas in the total consumption and will allow the area to keep the price stable and possibly reduce it a little.

Tet’s total investment in the project is €30 million. The project’s launch on Monday, August 19, was also attended by several ministers including Finance Minister Arvils Ašeradens (New Unity), who pointed out that it is an important step in the development of data infrastructure and increases the value of the partly state-owned company.

“This is a very precise response to today’s challenges – data, data processing, data organization and the need for customers to be able to work with it successfully. So I think it’s very good. Export is the main thing that is happening. So is investment [..],” said the Finance Minister.

Tet’s new DC7 data center next to the Salaspils thermal power plant is scheduled to start construction this autumn.