Vantage Data Centers Waterfall City
- Status
- Announced
- Location
- Midrand, South Africa
- Operator
- Vantage Data Centers
- IT load
- 87 MW planned
- Timeline
- Not disclosed
- Last verified
Overview
Vantage Data Centers is building a facility at Waterfall City, a large mixed-use development in Midrand, Gauteng. The company has secured 87MW of power from SolarAfrica under a power purchase agreement.
Vantage is a US-headquartered hyperscale data centre developer with campuses across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The Waterfall City site represents its South African entry.
Waterfall City sits in the Midrand corridor between Johannesburg and Pretoria — the same general zone as the ADC Midrand campus and within the Ekurhuleni/Midrand industrial belt.
Capacity
What IT load means- IT load — full buildout
- 87 MW
- 87MW is the figure reported as secured from SolarAfrica; total facility capacity may differ.
- reported Source [s1]
Power in context
87 MW of IT load is roughly the average demand of 252,300 South African households (at 250 kWh per month).
It is 0.29% of South Africa's effective grid capacity (~30 GW available).
Comparable to a large regional cloud facility.
Infrastructure
Tier certification explained- AI cooling readiness
- Not assessed
Cooling adequacy for AI workloads has not been independently assessed for this facility.
AI racks draw around 100 kW each, about ten times a conventional rack, so rack-level liquid cooling is the key differentiator. Training versus inference
Power
PPAs and wheeling- Grid utility
- Eskom
- Grid carbon intensity
- 900 g CO₂/kWh
- Eskom grid average ~900 gCO₂/kWh per Eskom Integrated Reports (2022-23). Grid-level figure. 100% renewable PPA offsets but does not change grid carbon intensity rating.
- estimated Source [s1]
- Renewable % (reported)
- 100%
Grid carbon in context
900 g CO₂/kWh: very high — coal-heavy grid. That is 2.1 times the global average of 436 g (IEA, 2022). For comparison, France is about 60, the UK about 175 and the US about 400.
Grid-level estimate. PPAs and on-site renewables may lower the effective footprint.
Water
Water stress explained- Water source
- Municipal
- Water stress (WRI)
- High
Governance
Data residency explained- Jurisdiction
- South Africa
Workloads
Training versus inference- General cloud
- Colocation
Vantage is a hyperscale-focused colocation provider. Workload profile inferred from corporate strategy; no AI-specific capacity publicly disclosed for this site.
Sources
How sources are ranked- [s1] Wheeling and dealing behind South Africa's AI factories, UCT AI Initiative
trade press Retrieved 11 May 2026 Not yet archived
What these source types mean
- trade press
- Specialist outlets (DatacenterDynamics, DataCenter Knowledge, etc.) with editorial standards.