Power Hungry Cloud Challenges Grid With Massive Growth.
Power Hungry Cloud Challenges Grid – Cloud and AI’s intense power demands are pressuring Australian power grids in a way that makes the explosion of these technologies impossible to ignore.
Electronic security people at all levels of the business having been listening to developers drone on about cloud and video content and data analytics applications for decades without experiencing a fulsome rubber-meets-road moment.
Now energy operators in Sydney are reporting AI growth so profound their data centre connection requests would triple the power demand of their service area. Some operators say nuclear energy should be considered as a solution to the crisis.
Endeavour Energy made the stunning revelation in a submission to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s planning review, which subsequently told the Australian Financial Review it was prepared to model data centre demand growth separately if requested to do so.
To put the growth of power demand in context, Endeavour Energy already has 16 data centres in its area, with 19 applications for data centre connection and a further 18 enquiries regarding data centre connection. A single big data centre uses the same amount of electricity as a regional city the size of Bundaberg.
“If realised, we expect data centres alone to reach a peak demand that’s over 250 per cent of our total network demand today,” Endeavour told the AEMO in a submission made as part of its network planning review.
Endeavour said data centres were “one of the most significant drivers for demand growth besides electrification and the take-up of electric vehicles”.
Meanwhile, NextDC, the largest ASX-listed data centre, said last week nuclear energy should be on the table to meet the power demands of cloud. Origin energy is also feeling the pressure.
“Some of our hyperscale data centre customers are forecasting growth in their energy demand of up to 30 to 40 per cent between now and 2026/27,” said James Magill, head of Origin Energy’s Origin Zero unit.
Origin supplies about 228 MW of power to data centres – about a third of total demand. Magill said the company expected this sector to be “one of the principal drivers of growth in electricity demand in Australia over the next decade”.
A particular concern for energy providers and data centre operators is that the proposed transition to renewable energy doesn’t give the sort of iron-clad power 24/7 supply guarantees that businesses depend on.
You can learn about how the heat generated by data centres could be used to generate electricity here or there’s more SEN news here.
“Power Hungry Cloud Challenges Grid With Massive Growth.”
