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Accelerate the World's Transition to Sustainable Energy - to fight Anthropogenic Climate Change, page-38255

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mudguts

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16/09/24

08:45

Post #: 75686379
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Originally posted by birdman29 ↑

From England ...The Saudi Arabia of Wind Power

The National Grid has said that the power used by data centres could grow sixfold in the next decade. ...

Microsoft is building a gas plant to power one of its data centres there, while Meta has secured permission to use diesel generators at one of its sites.

Labour’s plans for[BCOLOR=rgba(0,0,0,0)]a data centre building blitz[/BCOLOR]are being put at risk by a power supply crunch at Britain’s biggest hub.
The electricity grid in the West London cluster, home to the biggest collection of data centres outside of the US, is at full capacity and unable to connect any more sites.
The tech industry now faces a wait of several years until new capacity can be added in the area, with the National Grid still waiting for planning permission to build a new electricity substation.
Fourteen data centre projects are on hold until the extra capacity can be added, the operator has said.
The Government has made[BCOLOR=rgba(0,0,0,0)]relaxing planning rules[/BCOLOR]for data centres a key part of its plans to boost growth and investment as well as embracing technologies such as artificial intelligence.
Last week, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, cheered an £8bn commitment from Amazon’s cloud computing arm to invest in Britain.
The Government also said it would categorise data centres as critical national infrastructure, meaning they would receive the same protections as energy and water systems.
Angela Rayner, the Housing Secretary, has also reopened two rejected data centre planning applications.
However, data centres have raised concerns over their impact on the grid, especially in dense urban areas.
The property development Segro is understood to be auctioning access to the final site that can currently connect a data centre to the grid in the “Slough Availability Zone”.
The area is the densest cluster of data centres outside of Ashburn in the US state of Virginia, and is prized because of high speed telecoms connections to Europe and the US.
“It is being bidded on by every operator under the sun, including us,” said an executive at one data centre.
National Grid has applied for planning permission to build a new substation in the area. Planning documents for the facility say that the existing substation in the area cannot be expanded.
It says that the grid has “several signed customer connections associated primarily with data centres” but that its existing substation “does not have capacity to connect any of the new customers and cannot be expanded”.
National Grid’s website showed that it originally hoped to receive planning permission from Buckinghamshire Council in the spring and that the substation would become operational in late 2027. However, the company is still waiting for approval meaning that the facility, situated in London’s green belt, is unlikely to come online until 2028 at the earliest.
A spokesman said National Grid did not have an updated timetable for the substation and that the company was awaiting planning permission.
Data centre demand has exploded in recent years amid the rise of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, which is extremely energy intensive and has led to concerns about[BCOLOR=rgba(0,0,0,0)]its impact on the grid and the environment[/BCOLOR].
Google was recently blocked from opening a data centre in Ireland amid fears it would put pressure on the electricity grid. Microsoft is building a gas plant to power one of its data centres there, while Meta has secured permission to use diesel generators at one of its sites.
Tech companies have increasingly looked outside of the West London cluster to build data centres. Microsoft last week secured planning permission to open a data centre on the site of a decommissioned power station in Eggborough, in North Yorkshire.
Last week, a company called DC01 said it had submitted plans for a £3.8bn data centre in Hertfordshire, where Google is also building a £1bn facility. However, concerns have also been raised that investment will go to other European hubs such as Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam.
The National Grid has said that the power used by data centres could grow sixfold in the next decade. The company said it was also improving transmission infrastructure to accommodate electricity demand.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology was contacted for comment.

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Why cant they put a wind turbine on the building & run the data centre like they plan to run the country??
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