Fujitsu has opened a £44m energy-efficient data centre in the UK which it says will contribute towards saving enough electricity each year to power up to 6,000 homes.

The centre was announced last August and is designed to address the shortage of data storage in London.

Located 35 miles from the capital, the site will serve customers in the UK and Europe, giving them increased capacity without the need to build their own facilities.

"Fujitsu's new data centre combines high resilience and high efficiency, which is difficult to achieve," said Martin Provoost, head of data centres at Fujitsu Services.

"Attaining high resilience requires more redundant infrastructure, which in turn consumes more energy.

"However, through new technology, Fujitsu's data centre achieves the optimum resilience level and a leading efficiency rating."

The centre's new features will save enough electricity to power 2,000 households a year, Fujitsu said.

These features include evaporation towers that remove heat more efficiently than air-conditioning systems, and heat pumps that reuse heat from other areas.

It also uses a more energy-efficient uninterruptible power supply to maintain the electricity in case of power failure.