Meralco’s new facility to power PLDT’s Laguna data center

MANILA Electric Co. (Meralco) has developed a new switching station that will support the power supply needs of the PLDT group’s hyperscale data center in Laguna, the Pangilinan-led power company said on Tuesday.

The company has commissioned a 115-kilovolt switching station that will help the data center meet its 50-megawatt (MW) power demand, Meralco said in a statement.

VITRO Sta. Rosa is owned by VITRO, Inc., a subsidiary of ePLDT and the data center arm of the PLDT group.

The Laguna data center is said to be the country’s largest artificial-intelligence (AI)-ready hyperscale data center to date.

“VITRO Sta. Rosa is not just another data center — it’s a facility designed to welcome hyperscalers and accelerate the country’s adoption of AI,” ePLDT and VITRO, Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Victor S. Genuino said.

“The digital infrastructure we are building directly supports the country’s modernization and progress, impacting industries like telco, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and government services, to name just a few. Our strong partnership with Meralco is strategic as we continue to build world-class facilities,” he added.

Hyperscale data centers are massive business-critical facilities for companies with major data processing and storage needs.

“The switching station design incorporates redundancy features, which guarantees our customer’s data center can maintain uninterrupted services — critical in an industry where even a brief outage can have significant and far-reaching consequences,” Meralco Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer Ronnie L. Aperocho said.

In 2023, Meralco energized hyperscale-ready data centers with an initial capacity of 22 MW, which can ramp up to 180 MW.

Meralco’s controlling stakeholder, Beacon Electric Asset Holdings, Inc., is partly owned by PLDT Inc.

Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has an interest in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls. — Sheldeen Joy Talavera