Market Trends of Nigeria Data Center Power Industry
IT and Telecom to Hold Significant Share
- Nigeria has one of the largest telecom markets in Africa, supported by the second-largest economy on the continent after South Africa. In February 2023, the Nigerian Communications Commission, the Nigerian telecom regulator, reported that the number of active mobile telecommunication plan subscriptions in the country reached about 222,571 million in December 2022, which showed the demand for mobile services in Nigeria. Overall, increasing network traffic is leading to major data center investment and DC power adoption.
- Most traditional data centers use alternating current (AC) power distribution systems, while telecom data centers run primarily on direct current (DC) power, such as UPS and PDU. Telecom data centers get power from the utility in AC and convert it to DC using rectifiers, which also charge their batteries.
- The average power usage efficiency of African data centers is 1.5 PUE. This requires major power sources such as backup generators and UPS to maintain the electricity backup.
- According to the NCC (Nigerian Communications Commission), as of 2023, Nigeria's broadband penetration was 44.30%, with more than 84 million subscriptions, compared to about 76 million in 2022. COVID-19 boosted subscriber counts during the pandemic under remote working schemes. With increasing data center construction, the demand for the market is expected to increase.
- The deployment of 5G will play a key role in pushing the expansion plans and executing them as planned. For 5G networks and ubiquitous broadband, the country requires 167,000 km of fiber infrastructure. In Nigeria, data center facilities will be in demand as fiber connectivity increases, so advanced technologies can be used remotely. Such factors may lead to major data center power adoption.
Understand The Key Trends Shaping This Market
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Switched Power Distribution Unit to Register Significant Growth
- The Nigerian data center power market is expected to develop expressively over the prediction period owing to the region's huge potential for data center service providers. The market in the region is being propelled by a stable stream of government and commercial initiatives that are shaping a digital infrastructure to encourage the adoption of automation across a variety of end-user verticals, including telecoms, financial services, retail, and manufacturing.
- A switched power distribution unit is a type of intelligent rack PDU that allows to power on and off individual outlets or groups of outlets on the PDU. With a switched PDU, devices can be power-controlled remotely and in a specific order. Such units are mostly being adopted in the cloud data center.
- Large cloud companies are adopting such PDUs to benefit from this untapped market. The increase in hybrid cloud service providers creates demand for colocation services. These data center facilities help service providers make smarter decisions and analyze data. The indirect impact of the new data center facilities for cloud-based services provided by companies is boosting the demand, which is expected to attract more opportunities in the future. In October 2022, Google activated its local cloud region for Nigeria to offer better cloud-based security to public entities and government ministries.
- Switched power distribution units allow key personnel to remotely control the on/off state of individual outlets. This allows operators to manage critical loads, avoid wasted power, and ensure equipment is plugged into the correct phase and schedule. APC's Easy switched rack power distribution units enable advanced, user-customizable power management and remote monitoring in Nigeria. Remote outlet level controls allow power on/off functionality for power cycling to reboot equipment and restrict unauthorized use of individual outlets remotely.
- With the increasing number of data centers, the demand for switched PDUs is expected to increase since they limit the power usage at the outlet to avoid accidental overloads and are ideal for remote data centers.
