Power-hungry data centres scrambling to find enoughelectricity to meet demand
story by businessreporter Samuel Yang
• 6h • 3 min read
IN THIS ARTICLE
Data centres couldconsume more than 8 per cent of the energy in Australia's grid by 2030. (ABCNews: Daniel Irving)© Provided by ABC Business
Inside a vault of this data centre is what looks like a hotel forcomputers.
It's noisy and hot. Each of these blinking server racks belongs to abusiness or an organisation.
They house their critical infrastructure and data here because it'shighly secure – with layers of security including ID checks and fingerprintsjust to get in.
"Whether that's networking or just general computerinfrastructure," David Dzienciol, chief customer and commercial officer ofNEXTDC, told The Business inside a data hall.
"We run 14 data centres across the country, servicing customersfrom the largest multinationals, through to Australia's largest companies allthe way through to small business.
"We rely on technology for everything, whether it's our healthcare, banking services or government services.
"There's no industry that isn't reliant on data today."
Soaring demand
Australia is one of the top five data centre hubs in the world.
There are 214 data centres spread across the country, according to theAustralian Information Industry Association.
With the explosion of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, theindustry is expected to grow exponentially.
"We believe that we are at the beginning of a massive shift withAI," Mr Dzienciol said.
"We truly believe that we're at the beginning of a change inaccelerated computing that could see demand skyrocket over the nextdecade."
Power hungry beasts
Data centres are already big power users in Australia.
They need significant amounts of electricity to run high-intensitycomputing and cooling systems.
Justone large data centre can consume the same amount of energy required to power50,000 homes.
Morgan Stanley estimates that data centres are currently using 5 percent (1,050 MW) of the electricity on Australia's power grid and that isexpected to grow to 8 per cent (2,500 MW) by 2030.
Some estimates even suggest they could require up to 15 per cent of thepower on the grid by then.
Straining grid
As the nation races to electrify, with households dumping gas appliancesand more people driving electric vehicles, the grid is already under pressurefrom rising demand.
The Australian Energy Market Operator's latest Integrated Systems Plananticipates overall electricity consumption from the grid to nearly double by2050.
The director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Bruce Mountain, saidAustralia was not well placed to cope with that increasing demand.
"We are now hitting the difficult stages of the energytransition," Professor Mountain told The Business.
"We'vegot wind and sun and land, but we don't have other clean energy, biomass ordecent amounts of hydro or nuclear.
"And that's a disadvantage that we face that other countries don'tface."
Professor Mountain thinks although the data centre sector is a vitalservice to Australia's economy, the boom will make the energy transition morechallenging.
"They make the transition challenge harder, because not just thatyou need to replace coal-fired generation, you need to build new capacity tomeet rising demand," he said.
"It's not yet an insurmountable problem, but if the demandcontinues to escalate at the rate it has, based on the recent developments, Ithink it is an issue."
More price pressure
The director of the Energy Program at Grattan Institute, Tony Wood,agreed that the sector presents a unique challenge to the grid.
"That means putting pressure on our electricity grid. It means evenputting pressure on our greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
"If you add a lot more demand, and you don't add more supply, thenprices go up.
"I think governments can get on top of this, but now is the time tobe doing it."
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the first auction of the CapacityInvestment Scheme, which will support 6GW of new power, has received more than40GW of project registrations, showing there is a strong pipeline of renewablesready to go.
Energy retailer and generator Origin supplies power to about a third ofall data centres in Australia.
The man in charge of these accounts said the company was looking at arange of options to meet their needs.
"Typically, we will look at solutions like distributed generation,so wind or solar at site, storage solutions and backup generation, and usingenergy from the grid as well," James Magill, head of Origin Zero, told TheBusiness.
"Our customers, with their forecasts, would vary somewhat, buttypically, those growth forecasts could be between about 10 and 30 per cent peryear."
Mr Magill said to meet those energy demands, companies could bestrategic about where they build data centres.
"Some of the locations could be more regional, and that can match someof the new renewable generation."
Power-hungrydata centres scrambling to find enough electricity to meet demand (msn.com)
