CREATE Architecture Ltd’s Post

✅Power Constraint: The primary issue facing data centers is not power generation but transmission and distribution. Current power grids struggle to meet demands, especially with AI's rapid growth, significantly increasing data center power consumption. ✅Dire Predictions: Marc Ganzi initially foresaw a power shortage in five years during the Berlin Infrastructure Conference. He revised this, saying data centers might run out of power in the next 18 to 24 months. ✅Permit Delays: In the US, obtaining permits for new data center power can take up to two-and-a-half years in Dallas, six years in Atlanta, and seven years in Silicon Valley. Europe faces longer lead times, with Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin seeing up to eight years. ✅Global Electricity Usage: Data centers consumed 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2022, about 2% of all global electricity. This is expected to double by 2026, driven by computing and cooling functions. ✅Solutions: Addressing this requires creative solutions, like placing future data centers closer to renewable power sources for energy or grid independence. ✅Takeaways: These points underline growing challenges and the urgent need for innovative solutions in the data center industry to cope with rising power demands due to AI's rise.

Key Data Centre News 📣 Colt Data Centre Services has now secured a second piece of land adjacent to its current planned data centre campus in Hayes, West London, which the company says will allow it to more than double the size of the campus 🔨 AirTrunk has signed a solar power purchase agreement with CLP Power to help its customer Microsoft meet their net zero targets. The 200MW agreement will draw on green energy from solar sites across 17,000 locations in Hong Kong ☀ AI chip start up Cerebras Systems plans 2.5MW deployment on Nautilus Data Technologies floating data centre 🌊 The capacity of hyperscale data centres around the world has doubled in the last four years, according to a report from Synergy Research Group. They predict that a similar growth rate will continue through the next decade amid high demand for cloud services and AI tools 🤖 https://lnkd.in/e88bc7mA No bake of the week as I was in sunny Lisbon this weekend, what an amazing city! #datacentres #datacenters #digitalinfrastructure #investment #power #ppa #hyperscale #cloud

Clean baseload power is the key to data centers meeting their clean energy goals. But just how big is the opportunity and what are the challenges? To find out, look at @S&P Global Market Intelligence latest Datacenters and Energy Report. Key takeaways include: 📈 They forecast that national growth in clean energy generation will increase in proportion to the increase in power demand, but note that generation and use aren’t aligned at the state level. 🚀 In light of the clean energy contracts signed by hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google, their forecasted energy demand may be on the low side. 💲 Not surprisingly, states with deregulated power markets have proven attractive to data centers, encouraging many Tier 2 states to pursue policy and tax incentives to bring data centers to their region. Click here to download the executive summary: https://lnkd.in/eDcjcyhU

Good news... but... ...as with all good news, there's usually more than the headline. It will be important that we establish a secure and reliable electricity supply for not only these data centres, but also for all the rest of us living here who rely upon electricity. "The multibillion-dollar question is how can the province, which recently has been faced with tight electricity supplies, meet the needs of Albertans while also attracting developers to build data centres here?" #energy #datacentre #AI #electricity #infrastructure

   It's up for debate whether enough capacity can be added to the grid to keep up with data center power demand    Some have argued a new compute paradigm is needed    But replacing entrenched systems will be wildly easier said than done In the U.S. alone could exceed 90 gigawatts (GW) – or nearly 10% of the total forecast 2029 load of 942 GW. Indeed, the report adds “improving energy efficiency may only lead to more computing demand, not reduced energy demand.” https://lnkd.in/e55Pmhqa

Here are the main points: Data centers will need 3x energy by 2030 if they are to keep pace with demand. $500B in data center infrastructure investment will be needed. US has the fastest growing market for data centers Limitations in interconnecting to the grid is the primary cause of unavailability. There is a labor shortage in electrical worker trades for required projects. There are investment opportunities with energy companies. Check their financial reports to know where they are steering their efforts to meet the growing energy demand.

The destruction of key data cables will not stop the insatiable power demand of data centers Helsinki to Frankfurt in 20 ms, the destructed C-Lion1 submarine fiber-optic cable was a direct connection between one of the most important internet hubs in the world and a region with low-cost power supply as well as the coldest avg temperatures in Europe (less cooling demand). The business model, lower operating costs of data centers with a near perfect connection to the main hub Frankfurt attracted already 39 data centers in Finland. And data centers are not only a key economic driver but also a significant factor for additional power demand. 📢 Power demand from data centers has become a key driver of European power demand and worldwide. And it will keep growing as our hunger for AI is insatiable. My colleagues Matthew Jones and Matteo Mazzoni as well as Luca Urbanucci, PhD and Stefan Konstantinov analyzed this topic and explain the inputs that we use in our long-term power, hydrogen and carbon model in an impressive way. #datacenter #power #powerdemand #datacable #CLion1 #energy https://lnkd.in/ehbqyU4R https://lnkd.in/eTP-VijB

CenterPoint Energy reports a 700% surge in AI data center interconnection requests in Texas, reaching 8GW. This spike highlights the growing demand for AI infrastructure and the need for significant investments in the state’s transmission network to meet future needs. #datacenter

Today, our Co-Founder & CEO, Greg Robinson, shared an article on Forbes Technology Council exploring how Independent Power Networks (IPNs) could transform energy delivery to meet the growing demands of high-energy users like data centers while strengthening grid reliability.

Data centres are the foundation on which the Internet operates. Every time we perform an action online, data is generated and these hubs are responsible for processing it. But the ever-increasing volume of data and the speed at which it’s handled means data centres are a significant contributor to the global carbon footprint. They account for up to 1-1.5% of global electricity consumption – which could rise to 8% if action isn’t taken – and contribute 1% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Much of the energy waste data centres contribute comes from the cooling systems used to maintain optimal temperatures for IT equipment. In 2010, data centres were handling 2 zettabytes of data, but that estimate has increased exponentially to 120 zettabytes per year. And it’s only going to keep increasing as the use of data-heavy technologies like AI becomes more widespread. It’s not just the number and capacity but also the scale of data centres that continues to grow, with “hyperscale” locations that exceed 5,000 servers and 10,000 square feet! #DataCentre #Technology #Energy