Spotlight: Amazon's US$205mn Chilean datacenter project

Amazon has presented a project to build a technological data storage center in the Puente Alto district of Chilean capital Santiago.

The company had already stated late last year that Santiago was one of the cities chosen for the installation of new Amazon Web Services cloud regions.

"AWS continues to explore options to support the growth of the customer base in the Southern Cone, including various infrastructure investments in Chile and other locations in the region," AWS said in an emailed response when asked about the announcement by BNamericas.

"While we have nothing to announce today, we look forward to continuing to work closely with the customers, industry partners and the Chilean government as we deliver on our commitment to bring the benefits of the cloud to more communities around the world," it added.

In addition to Santiago, AWS plans to install cloud zones in other major Latin American cities Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Lima and Querétaro.

Until now, the company's only cloud region in Latin America is in São Paulo, Brazil, with three availability zones (datacenters).

The Santiago datacenter is the first major project to be outlined after Amazon's original announcement of its expansion in the region.

The US$205mn project is currently in the environmental evaluation phase.

The datacenter will be built on a 17.5-hectare site, where Amazon plans to build two buildings that include data rooms, offices, electrical and mechanical rooms, and material storage rooms. Building 1 will cover an area of 8,097m2 and building 2 will cover 8,310m2.

The project includes air conditioning and cooling systems with low water consumption, fire control systems and an electrical substation connected to the public network through two circuits.

The medium voltage electrical substation will cover 3,375m2. The project will also have 23 emergency power generators (2800Kw, 750Kw and 300Kw) with diesel fuel storage tanks, four of which are for backup.

The construction will be carried out in three stages, with the first involving the first half of building 1 and the campus, the second entailing the second half of building 1, and the third stage involving building 2.

The first-stage construction works are expected to start in August 2023, while the start of operations is estimated for 2025.