By Paul Homewood
h/t Tallbloke
Data centres will consume 20 per cent of Ireland’s power generation capacity by 2025, according to the country’s main grid operator, Eirgrid.
Eirgrid added that the huge increase in data centre activity in the country would eat up to 75 per cent of growth in Irish power demand.
The Irish Independent reports that the amount of power needed to store emails, texts and other online data could rise seven-fold as Ireland chases inward investment from tech giants including Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft.
“Large industrial connections normally do not dominate a country’s energy demand forecast but this is the case for Ireland at the moment,” the All-Island Generation Capacity Statement 2017-2026 says.
The situation has been further complicated by a fall in older conventional power plants, due to close over the same time frame. While more renewables are being added to the system, the newspaper reports that capacity in Dublin is ‘on a knife edge.’
Analysis from EirGrid shows that data centres already connected to the grid consume 250 MW of electricity, sufficient to power more than 210,000 homes.
Another 550 MW is due to be connected over the coming years, enough for almost 470,000 houses, while projects under discussion could consume as much as 1,000MW – enough for 850,000 homes.
“If all of these enquiries were to connect, the data centre load could account for 20 per cent of all-island peak demand,” it says in its ten-year transmission forecast statement. “Clearly the potential connection of demand on this scale is equivalent to decades of national demand growth.”
Massive investment in sub-stations and other infrastructure – particularly around Dublin – will be required, sources said.
“If these connections materialise, new large-scale generation, transmission solutions, demand side response and/or storage will be required in the Dublin area to accommodate further demand increases and ensure continued security of supply,” EirGrid says.
Data centres are big business in Ireland, not simply because of the attractive low tax and business friendly climate there, but because of the cold weather there! In particular they are centred around Dublin, close to the T50 fibre trunking system.
But for a country with about a tenth of the demand in the UK, this sort of electricity consumption is serious stuff.
With inter-connector availability, the Irish grid operator, EirGrid works closely with the Northern Ireland side, run by SONI. They produced a All-Island Capacity Generation Statement earlier this year, which made this forecast:
It also made this projection of available dispatchable capacity, which showed just how tight electricity supply is likely to become by the mid 2020s.
Currently, thermal power supplies about 75% of Ireland’s generation:
In the UK, as the share of renewable increases, the National Grid hopes to meet peak demands by paying large industrial and commercial users to switch off. But I don’t quite see this sort of demand side management going down to well with Google!
Increasingly therefore it appears that Ireland will become more dependent on interconnectors from Britain, the East-West, which runs from Wales, and Moyle from Scotland.
The Capacity Statement has considered what the future for Ireland/N Ireland looks like without these interconnectors, and it does not look too bright!
In the meantime, Britain is planning to rely more on importing power from France, who themselves are phasing out nuclear energy, which is the basis for such imports.
Meanwhile, virtue signalling Microsoft has reached an agreement with GE to purchase all of the energy from its wind farm in County Kerry, Ireland, as it looks to increase the use of renewable energy in its data centres.
One wonders why they don’t go the whole hog, build their own wind farm and switch off from the Irish Grid completely. At least that would leave more electricity for the people who really need it!
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October 21, 2017 at 05:36AM
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