Alibaba holds preliminary power talks with Solaria for Spanish data centre

Alibaba has held preliminary talks with Spanish solar producer Solaria about power for a data centre at Puertollano, The Next Web reported, citing Bloomberg. Both companies declined to comment. Solaria's project has 200MW of capacity on 100,000 square metres in former photovoltaic manufacturing clean rooms. The talks coincide with Spain's draft rules for data centres. Sites above 1MW would need 80% renewable electricity every hour or lose their grid connection, with new demand matched to newly built clean capacity. Operators would also need to be established in the EU and keep data and metadata within European borders. The draft does not resolve whether an EU subsidiary of a Chinese parent would satisfy the establishment requirement.