Summary
- Telehouse and KDDI have confirmed the Inventory Estate acquisition.
- The site has secured 65MVA of apparent electrical capacity.
- No commissioned IT power or completion date has been disclosed.
Telehouse and parent company KDDI have confirmed the acquisition of the Inventory Estate at East India Dock for more than £220 million, disclosing 65MVA of secured electricity capacity for a planned data centre expansion in London.
The official confirmation on 29 October adds technical detail to earlier property reporting about the transaction. Telehouse intends to develop a high-density facility as part of its Docklands campus, serving colocation, connectivity and AI computing demand.
The property was acquired from LaSalle Investment Management and Trilogy Real Estate. Its location near established Telehouse facilities creates an opportunity to extend an existing operating campus rather than establish an entirely separate infrastructure location.
The 65MVA figure is expressed in megavolt-amperes, a unit of apparent electrical power. It should not be presented as 65MW of usable IT load. The relationship between apparent power and real power depends on electrical characteristics, while cooling and supporting equipment consume some of the electricity delivered to a completed facility.
Telehouse says the secured capacity will underpin phased, long-term development. The company has not disclosed the finished facility’s IT power, rack capacity or commissioning timetable, so its eventual contribution to operating computing capacity remains unquantified.
Expansion within an established connectivity market
London Docklands contains a substantial concentration of data centres and telecommunications infrastructure. Customers locating equipment there can obtain network connections to carriers, cloud providers and other interconnected services, subject to physical access and individual commercial arrangements.
Proximity to an existing campus may assist with the provision of connectivity and operational support. It does not eliminate the construction and engineering requirements associated with converting or redeveloping an existing property for high-density computing.
New data halls require power distribution systems, switchgear, backup infrastructure and cooling plant that can maintain operating conditions under the expected load. Equipment density will influence the arrangement of the facility and the thermal systems required.
AI accelerator deployments can produce concentrated heat loads, increasing interest in direct liquid cooling and other high-capacity thermal arrangements. Telehouse has not disclosed the specific cooling design proposed for the Inventory Estate, making it premature to attribute a particular technology to the development.
The electrical provision is a meaningful project milestone, but secured capacity is not the same as a completed connection supplying a commissioned building. The site must still pass through the relevant development, construction, testing and operational stages.
Docklands programme continues
Telehouse is separately developing West Two, a nine-storey data centre building within its Docklands campus that is expected to complete in 2028. The Inventory Estate offers another expansion opportunity, but no evidence establishes that both projects share the same construction schedule.
The company has indicated that one of the largest facilities within its London campus may be developed on the new property. The design and detailed capacity have yet to be confirmed, so that ambition should not be read as a construction commitment at a particular scale.
Telehouse intends to continue engagement with local stakeholders in Tower Hamlets. Planning requirements, environmental considerations, access and construction effects will need to be addressed as proposals are developed.
The property’s earlier refurbishment created a mixed-use innovation campus, but the electrical and mechanical demands of a large computing installation differ substantially from those of conventional offices and commercial facilities.
Property ownership establishes control of a location; it does not confer permission to redevelop or guarantee energisation on a particular date. Those decisions sit alongside the separate question of which customers will ultimately occupy the facility.
The 29 October confirmation provides new evidence about the transaction, its intended infrastructure use and its secured apparent electrical capacity. Further planning and engineering disclosures are needed before the planned computing capacity and opening date can be established.
Telehouse’s presence in Docklands gives the project a defined network market, but customers considering high-density deployments will also assess the technical characteristics of the new building. Power resilience, cooling redundancy, fire protection and physical security will form part of the facility design and need verification once detailed proposals are available.
The publicly disclosed 65MVA provides a basis for understanding one major development constraint. It is not a forecast of how much energy the building will consume annually, since operating electricity use will depend on occupancy, equipment utilisation and the power used by supporting systems.
