Data Centre Campus Expansion, Dighi

An existing data centre campus at Dighi, Pune - five data centre buildings, a power house, a chiller plant, substations, offices and a cafeteria with 63 MW of connected load and 4 MWp of rooftop and car-park solar - is expanding with three more data centre buildings and two office buildings: IDC-6 (ground and five floors with a lower terrace over a lower ground level, 49 m high, 25,968 sq m) and IDC-7 and IDC-8 (ground and four floors, 45 m high, 20,644 and 24,640 sq m), with office buildings A-10.1 and A-11.1 of 5,608 sq m each. Two things make the electrical design of a data centre different from other buildings: its load is almost constant - a data hall's running load is half its connected load - and the supply must never stop, so every transformer, every diesel set and every fire zone is duplicated. The environmental clearance asks how the campus meets the energy conservation building code (ECBC): how much solar it generates, how its transformers and diesel sets are sized and what it does to use less.

Power: we listed every existing and proposed structure on the MSEDCL load list at its built-up area and worked out the expansion's load - 141.4 MW connected and 71.1 MW running (71.8 MVA): 51.6 MW for IDC-6, 43.8 MW each for IDC-7 and IDC-8 and 1.1 MW for each office building, with 67 transformers of 3,150 kVA (25, 21 and 21 for the three data centres) and two of 1,250 kVA at 11 kV / 415 V. Standby: 129 diesel sets of 2,250 kVA and four of 600 kVA, against an emergency minimum of 10% of connected load - 20.2 MW - for the commercial part, with every set giving 100% lighting backup. ECBC: the code asks for renewable generation of at least 1% of demand; the expansion adds 8.91 MWp - 6.3% - about 71 MWh a day, on 5,774 sq m of terrace and 43,675 sq m of relocated area, to the existing 4 MWp, with the latest BIS transformers, CPCB-approved sound-proof diesel canopies (75 dB), power-factor panels, LED lighting, lighting timers and fuel-efficient automatic sets as the other measures. Fire and services: the external fire hydrant layout with fire tanks of 90 kL and the pump room; the internal sprinkler layouts for the lower ground, ground, first, second, lower terrace and upper terrace levels, with 150 mm pre-action pipework and upright sprinklers; and the coordinated MEP layout with a plant room at -4.425 m, tanks with 1,500 mm free board, rainwater-harvesting pits, and the sewage, storm and fire pipes. The sets were issued on 28 and 29 October 2025 for the clearance.