New Datacentres Risk Doubling Great Britain's Electricity Use, Regulator Says

The amount of power being sought by new datacentre projects in Great Britain would exceed the national current peak electricity consumption, according to an industry watchdog. From a report: Ofgem said about 140 proposed datacentre schemes, driven by use of artificial intelligence, could require 50 gigawatts of electricity -- 5GW more than the country's current peak demand.

The figure was revealed in an Ofgem consultation on demand for new connections to the power grid. It pointed to a "surge in demand" for connection applications between November 2024 and June last year, with a significant number coming from datacentres. This has exceeded even the most ambitious forecasts.

Meanwhile, new renewable energy projects are not being connected to the grid at the pace they are being built to help meet the government's clean energy targets by the end of the decade. Ofgem said the work required to connect surging numbers of datacentres could mean delays for other projects that are "critical for decarbonisation and economic growth." Datacentres are the central nervous system of AI tools such as chatbots and image generators, playing a vital role in training and operating products such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

We could just require the data centres to pay

[shilly]

It wouldn’t be beyond the wit of humanity to require data centres to pay for all their own genny power, insist on it being low carbon, and require them to pay a fee on top of that. If it means some of them go off in a huff, well, that just lessens the strain. If they go bust in a bubble, we end up with lots of loverly overcapacity, and it shouldn’t be that difficult to rejig the distribution to take advantage of it.

There is no reason that taxpayers or domestic energy bill payers have to shoulder the costs or suffer the problems.

We managed to auction off spectrum quite well, and we have S108 for housing which is not brilliant but better than nothing. We should just bloody do the same, and if Matt Clifford kicks off about it, tell him he’s a clever cookie and can help Claude and BX and all the rest of them figure out their new NPV calculations.

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[Anonymous Coward]

This. They should pay for the infrastructure they need and nobody else required.

Re: We could just require the data centres to pay

[OrangeTide]

Peak capitalism is about socializing costs and privatizing gains.

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[anegg]

If it takes double the energy use to have "AI-enabled" human existence, at what point will the debate shift to which half of the future energy consumption we can do without - the AI half of the consumption, or the human half of the consumption?

That would require a motivated, aware public.

[couchslug]

No such public exists, either in the corrupt USA or passive, submissive UK.

Re:We could just require the data centres to pay

[Ogive17]

In the US, local governments are in a race to the bottom. There are usually enough willing to participate (despite what the residents want) in an incentive bidding war to lure these development projects to the area for that short term economic benefit.

Elections rarely have anything to do with qualifications/plans for the future anymore, simply if you prefer to take it in the 'R'ump or like the big 'D'. Enough voters are blind followers and will keep incumbents in place regardless of destructive actions.

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[jsonn]

Which economic benefits? They don't almost no jobs, they suck up a lot of resources and they don't even pay taxes.

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[Ogive17]

Short term economic benefit is related to the construction of the facility.

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[gurps_npc]

Most of the cost is not the electricity but the new/replaced Transmission lines.

Electricity is actually cheaper to make now than ever before (in large part because of solar and wind) but we are spending massive amounts to replace and build new transmission capacity.

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[shilly]

Distribution and storage are certainly important costs. But I’m not suggesting we only ask AI DC builders to pay for generating capacity. I’m saying they should be required to pay for their system burden, which includes those things.

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[gurps_npc]

Its not just the last mile. In order to put in the last mile, they have to replace all the lines from the power plant to the final data center.

They are mostly old and out dated and would have to be replaced sometime in the next decade anyway, but if you build the new last mile they will also have to upgrade everything now. Most of it is carrying electricity to other homes and only about 5% of the electricity is going to the new lines.

They argue that they should not have to pay 100% of the costs if 95% of

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[shilly]

Those two things are not the same thing. One way they could shoulder a portion of their costs would be to do on-site power generation, but they’ll still want grid connectivity etc and so should still pay in for that.

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[Local ID10T]

Careful, that's the Trump position. He said they should have their own on-site power generation to avoid impacting the public grid.

Just because Trump posited the idea does not make it bad. The devil is in the details. Do it right = good. Do it wrong = worse than where we started.

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[mjwx]

It wouldn’t be beyond the wit of humanity to require data centres to pay for all their own genny power, insist on it being low carbon, and require them to pay a fee on top of that. If it means some of them go off in a huff, well, that just lessens the strain. If they go bust in a bubble, we end up with lots of loverly overcapacity, and it shouldn’t be that difficult to rejig the distribution to take advantage of it.

There is no reason that taxpayers or domestic energy bill payers have to shoulder the costs or suffer the problems.

We managed to auction off spectrum quite well, and we have S108 for housing which is not brilliant but better than nothing. We should just bloody do the same, and if Matt Clifford kicks off about it, tell him he’s a clever cookie and can help Claude and BX and all the rest of them figure out their new NPV calculations.

That is the case in the UK. Datacenters pay business rates, not the regulated consumer rates... and constantly complain about it. Also have to abide by strict environmental regulations.

I'm sure a Libertardian will be along shortly to explain why not subsidising businesses and not allowing them to pollute willy-nilly is harmful whilst saying that people they don't like shouldn't receive public funds out of the other side of their mouth.

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[shilly]

I’m a Brit, so I know about business rates. They don’t come anywhere close to covering the costs of a big build out of our electricity infra!

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[noshellswill]

Well spoken. And LLM is not a public service ... like water or sewage ...  that benefits all. LLMs will benefit  nitches & a very very select few.

how can they do that

[serviscope_minor]

It's not like the electricity comes from nowhere.

Maybe we should build a load of wind capacity to power them. Then when the bubble bursts we'll have a load of power and maybe some GPUs to pick up cheap without exorbitant postage costs.

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[VampireByte]

".. and maybe some GPUs to pick up cheap .."

Do you not realize that the hardware going into data centers isn't compatible with consumer interfaces?

When your navy decommissions ships, imagine thinking "Oh, I could buy that ship for cheap and go fishing on a pond with it."

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[haruchai]

there are many people who have home server setups built out of decommed DC hardware.
I have a couple 1U and 2U servers and there are more than a few intrepid souls who have much, much more, even some blade servers which I think is bonkers

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[skam240]

there are many people who have home server setups built out of decommed DC hardware.

No there isn't. Decommissioned data center hardware is an incredibly unusual thing for a person to have in their home.

It's weird to me that you have no conceptualization of how unusual what you're doing is relative to the average person. That you are a tech enthusiast with a few like minded friends and coworkers but somehow don't understand that that is far from the norm for 99.9% of people.

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[serviscope_minor]

Yeah but to the original point, decommissioned kit is useful for some of us. For anyone able to run a small rack at home or work, a glut of cheap kit will be quite nice,.

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[skam240]

Oh, sure. In the case of mass data center closures there would be a small number of people who would put a small amount of the decommissioned data center hardware to good use. Most of that stuff would end up being disposed of though, hopefully in a proper manner. Looking online it looks like you folks in the UK are about as good as we are in the US with this though so most would actually end up improperly disposed of in third world countries.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about UK e-waste processing of cour

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[serviscope_minor]

Please correct me if I'm wrong about UK e-waste processing of course as I just went off of Google AI summaries.

Not sure about e-waste, not may area of expertise. We're pretty good with general household and packaging waste recycling.

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[skam240]

We're pretty good with general household and packaging waste recycling.

Looking at the numbers you folks do better than us with plastic waste but are still only recycling 17% of it. The UK burns a majority of its plastic waste which I wouldn't really call and ideal way to deal with that stuff. https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/... [greenpeace.org.uk]. .

Not to be overly critical of the UK though as like I pointed out we're doing even worse here in the US. I just don't think there are many first world countries that really do waste disposal well.

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[serviscope_minor]

Looking at the numbers you folks do better than us with plastic waste but are still only recycling 17% of it. The UK burns a majority of its plastic waste which I wouldn't really call and ideal way to deal with that stuff.

I don't know off hand if those figures are accurate (I ought to!) but it doesn't sounds that far off the mark. We don't really do landfills any more.

Of the stuff that makes it to a MRF (material recover facility---a separation plant that takes in mixed recycling), about 60-70% makes it out

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[haruchai]

"Most of that stuff would end up being disposed of though, hopefully in a proper manner"
no need to hope. you can be confident the vast majority of it will NOT be

Re: So much for "data sovereignty"...

[EldoranDark]

You're right, UK has some of the most expensive electricity around, at an average price of 25c per kWh. And that is subsidised by a standing charge of 65c a day per household, meaning it disproportionally affects those who try to be economical.

So, charge them a higher rate to subsidise others

[Timmy D Programmer]

Charge heavy users on a sliding scale, and subsidise low use users rates with the added revenue.

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[Nicholas Grayhame]

it's not only the cost of the extra electricity

there is the cost of the infrastructure needed to generate that electricity too

They double count.

[gurps_npc]

What happens (in the USA at least), is the tech companies know they are likely to be denied permission, so a single project will apply for permission in multiple different electrical grid areas.

If they get permission in two or more locations, they select one (after asking for bribes, erm I mean tax breaks) and build just at just one location.

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[BeepBoopBeep]

That's how any industry works when you need large land / infra: Factories, sports stadiums, etc. Nothing new

new infrastucture to generate electricity needed?

[Nicholas Grayhame]

then the companies that own datacenters should pay for it

pretty simple

Squatters

[Luthair]

I wonder how many of these are really data centres vs middle men looking to acquire hookup rights that they can subsequently lease to someone else.

Queue capacity is not peak demand

[dbu]

The Guardian headline mixes a queue/capacity metric with a real load metric.

Ofgem’s figures:
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites... [ofgem.gov.uk]
- 45 GW = actual GB peak load (real demand snapshot)
- 125 GW = demand connection queue (requested/contracted connection capacity)
~50 GW = datacenters within that queue
~20 GW = datacenters financially committed

So this is not like-for-like (it compares requested connection capacity to simultaneous usage).

The real story is:
- real datacentre boom (possibly bubble-like),
- very noisy/

UK Gov bought the AI Hype

[butt0nm4n]

Hook line and sinker

Gave Palantir and Weird Peter Thiel all the NHS data. Sure there were contracts saying Palantir wont use the data for commercial gain but anyone who trusts an AI company is naïve, they were founded on robbed data and will go on robbing. Americans expect your medical insurance premiums to go up once you have been profiled against NHS data.

Our PM's judgement has been sketchy since day 1.

Not a problem at all

[NotAMarshallow]

Solar and wind energy have grown so much that lollipops and candy canes are popping up all over the land.

so make they make it cheaper for everyone

[Crenor]

Datacenters have MONEY, they would be fine if you put in a - only if consumers benefit in lower energy bills - buy lowering energy costs, not raising them - our whatever system means people pay less then they do today - from day 1, not day X. Having datacenters pay all the extra costs. Ends the argument real quick.