Alphabet, the parent company of Google is building a $1B data-center on the very edge of the northern part of the M25 ring-road on the outskirts of the historic town of Waltham Cross.
The installation is the Google 1st data center in the UK, and will join 32 other sites around the world.
The data-center is the third $1B UK investment in recent years – following the purchase of the Central St Giles development in London’s West End and the development of its Kings cross offices. Google have also invested $1M in its Accessibility Discovery Center in St Pancras.
The new data center is being built on 33 acres of former farm land just off the A10, approximately .75 of a mile from Junction 25 of the M25.
Once complete, this investment will bring crucial compute capacity to businesses across the UK, supporting AI innovation and helping to ensure reliable digital services to Google Cloud customers and Google users in the UK and abroad.
The new site will be powered by electricity provided by ENGIE from offshore wind energy generated at the Moray West wind farm in Scotland. This wind farm will add 100 MW of energy to the UK national grid, and put Google’s UK operations on track to operate at or near 90% carbon-free energy in 2025.
The site will utilise off-site heat recovery which presents an opportunity for energy conservation that benefits the local community, as it allows for the heat generated by the data center to be used by nearby homes and businesses. The data center is also set to deploy an air-based cooling system.
London Kings Cross
Anyone travelling into London Kings Cross over the last few years will not have missed the huge building project rising up track-side as you pull into the station.
The 11-story building covers an eye-watering 1 million sq ft and is Google’s 1st wholly owned & designed building outside the US. Once complete, Google will occupy 650,000 sq ft of the building with the remaining being leased to other businesses and shops.
Nicknamed the landscraper, from end to end, the building is longer than the Shard is tall (330m vs 310m). The building is set to house a three-lane 25m swimming pool alongside a 200m running & walking circuit.
The building itself is being made from materials sourced through Google’s healthy materials programme, and the roof will feature landscaped gardens. It is a engineering project on a whole new scale.
The building forms part of Camden Councils plan to regenerate the entire Kings Cross / St. Pancras area under what they are calling the Knowledge quarter.
The Accessibility Discovery Center
This new Headquarters is just a short stroll away from the other Google premise – The Accessibility Discovery Center (ADC).
The center is a space where Google engineers, researchers, product teams and partners can build new kinds of accessible technologies to remove more of the barriers that people with disabilities face every day.
Built in consultation with local partners including The Royal National Institute of Blind People, The Royal National Institute for Deaf People and Everyone Can, alongside Google’s internal Disability Alliance employee resource group, the space is a workshop for research and product development, collaborating, co-designing and learning with the accessibility and disability communities.
Central St. Giles
Central St. Giles in the West-End of London has been the rented home to Google’s UK staff since 2012, but in 2022 Google announced the $1B purchase of the entire development.
The development was built in 2010 and features a number of colourful 15-story high buildings surrounding a central courtyard. It was inevitable that Google would be a tenant considering the colour scheme chosen by the architects.
The development is 408,000 sq ft and houses multiple businesses as well as 109 residential apartments, although the site only has 10 parking spaces at a price of £100,000.
80% of the heating and hot water is generated by biomass boilers, while all of the water discharged from the cooling tower is collected for re-use in irrigation systems and the buildings’ flushing toilets.
The roof features terrace gardens which collect 60% of the rainfall the building receives – the collected water is also stored for the irrigation systems.
Getting data to Google’s offices
To facilitate the huge amount of data travelling between these Google premises and their customers, Google has recently installed its’ own private undersea fibre-optic cable.
Named Grace Hopper after the American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral, this fibre optic cable stretches 7,191 Km between Bellport, New York and Bilbao in Spain. The cable was then routed to Bude in Cornwall in 2022 to provide Google with extra capacity to its UK interests.
The UK – the place to be for digital investments
All these investments are down to Google’s drive to support the UK’s increasing digital economy. The amount that technology contributes to the U.K. economy has grown on average by 7% year on year since 2016.
U.K.-based venture capital investment is ranked third in the world, reaching a record high of $15 billion in 2020, despite the challenging conditions from the COVID-19 pandemic.
10% of all current U.K. job vacancies are in tech roles, and the number of people employed in the tech sector has grown 40% in two years.
This is further boosted by Google’s partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to allow thousands of job seekers the ability to gain scholarships to Google’s Career Certificates in high-growth, high-demand fields such as IT support, Data Analysis, Project management, and Cyber Security.
The certificates are also available to anyone via the coursera training platform which costs £30/ mth.
