Data Centers Are Pushing Ireland's Electric Grid To the Brink (gizmodo.com) 66
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Behind every TikTok, Zoom call, and cat meme is a data center that stores, processes, or reroutes that data around the world. The more we do online, the bigger these data centers and their energy footprint get. At full capacity, servers within a modern "hyperscale" (aka "massive") data center can use as much power as 80,000 households. Although the data center industry is global, places with the right combination of stable climate and friendly regulations attract outsized attention from data center developers. Ireland is one of these places. The island nation hosts 70 data centers and is now the fastest-growing data center market in Europe. Unfortunately, supplying the equivalent of several extra cities worth of electricity to servers that aid your doomscrolling is starting to take a toll on Ireland's power grid.
Data centers already use around 900 megawatts of electricity in Ireland. According to Paul Deane, an energy researcher working with the MaREI Environmental Research Institute in Ireland, this adds up to at least 11% of Ireland's total electricity supply at present, a situation he described "as a serious energy systems problem." As Deane outlined, meeting this demand is making Ireland's current energy crisis worse and its target of halving greenhouse emissions by 2030 harder to reach. And things are only getting more challenging. A recent report from Eirgrid, Ireland's state-owned grid operator, shows that data centers will consume almost 30% (PDF) of Ireland's annual electricity supply by 2029.
Although, as Deane pointed out, data centers are essential to modern life, a small country with little grid power to spare hosting so many of them puts the sustainability of Ireland's entire power supply at risk. Deane summed up Ireland's issue with data centers as being a mismatch in size. "Data centers are large power users, and our power system is small, so plugging more of them into a small grid will start to have an outsized impact," he said. In stark comparison, Germany, the EU's biggest data center market overall, will use less than 5% of its grid capacity to power data centers in the same period. As well as stoking fears that the industry's growth will create blackouts and power shortages for Irish consumers this winter, data centers may also derail Ireland's drive to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Data centers already use around 900 megawatts of electricity in Ireland. According to Paul Deane, an energy researcher working with the MaREI Environmental Research Institute in Ireland, this adds up to at least 11% of Ireland's total electricity supply at present, a situation he described "as a serious energy systems problem." As Deane outlined, meeting this demand is making Ireland's current energy crisis worse and its target of halving greenhouse emissions by 2030 harder to reach. And things are only getting more challenging. A recent report from Eirgrid, Ireland's state-owned grid operator, shows that data centers will consume almost 30% (PDF) of Ireland's annual electricity supply by 2029.
Although, as Deane pointed out, data centers are essential to modern life, a small country with little grid power to spare hosting so many of them puts the sustainability of Ireland's entire power supply at risk. Deane summed up Ireland's issue with data centers as being a mismatch in size. "Data centers are large power users, and our power system is small, so plugging more of them into a small grid will start to have an outsized impact," he said. In stark comparison, Germany, the EU's biggest data center market overall, will use less than 5% of its grid capacity to power data centers in the same period. As well as stoking fears that the industry's growth will create blackouts and power shortages for Irish consumers this winter, data centers may also derail Ireland's drive to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Re: That agains should reming everyone that (Score:1)
We NeEd MoRe WiNd PowEr!11!1! (Score:2, Interesting)
PLANNED COLLAPSE, BABY!
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Well, there's plenty of wind on that island. I think there's still a peat burning plant, though.
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cloud = someone else's 3 computers. Because they will need redundancy.
What's with the apocalyptic framing? (Score:4, Insightful)
When one's country is the "fastest-growing data center market in Europe" that's called "success". Being too popular is a good kind of problem to have.
But for some reason this success is framed as "pushing to the brink", and "making Ireland's current energy crisis worse", and something that "puts the sustainability of Ireland's entire power supply at risk".
Much alarm!
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Indeed. It is silly to complain that your customers buy what you are selling.
The west coast of Ireland has plenty of wind. Just install more turbines.
Data centers are steady 24/7 power consumers, the most profitable kind.
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Wind turbines on the other hand aren't exactly steady power sources...
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correct, a nuclear power plant would be best, steady production with steady consumption, the only issue would be the time to build.
But wind/solar with a water reservoir would be a nice fit as well.
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Host In Ireland, a data center developer representative body, portrays the industry as a climate champion. It often highlights how data center owners make power purchase agreements with renewable energy developers. A press release from the group boasts that the growth of the Irish data center industry will “go hand-in-hand with the development of green electricity to meet power availability demands.” However, according to Deane, this is not the whole story. He said that unless data centers can somehow store renewable energy onsite or flexibly share computing demand globally (to get renewable energy 24/7), more data centers will result in more fossil fuel power plants. “They are not going to just turn off Facebook because it’s dark or it’s not windy outside,” he added.
Re: What's with the apocalyptic framing? (Score:2)
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Because this is Slashdot, a Science and Technology website, that is overly critical to any advancements in Science or Technology. Unless you do all your computing on a 2ft tall tower desktop PC, then you are just a pawn to big tech who is out to make our lives miserable.
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Shed no tears (Score:4, Insightful)
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Our only viable option appears to be nuclear power. The new goverment plans to "prepare for" 2 new plants; it's a suitably vague promise, but even if we get spades in the ground in '22 for this, it will not be enough.
It may not be enough in the short term but long term that's the only option. We know how to build a nuclear power plant that can remain operating for 80 years. Any wind or solar power project that goes up today will last 20 or 40 years. The wind and solar power might go up more quickly, taking 18 months to build instead of 60 months for nuclear power, but then the wind and solar power project can be expected to operate for 18 years while the nuclear power plant operates for 60 years. This means that lon
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Do they still not realize how many terawatts that's going to need?
Roughly as much as their current data centers, apparently. So that would be around 0.001 TW? Thirty years is quite a bit of time to take care of that -- certainly more than in case of those data centers which I'm sure grew up to their current state much faster than in those 30 years.
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Still having a 9 gigawatt power grid they clearly haven't done anything to upgrade it yet to cater for the electrification of all personal and light transport vehicles by 2050. Do they still not realize how many terawatts that's going to need?
From what I can find, Ireland uses 25.68 billion kWh per year, so that's about 5,136 kWh per person with its population of about 5 million. It also works out to an average rate of about 2.93 gigaWatts. Even just a casual glance at that number should tell you that they're not going to need teraWatts of electricity (just like a casual glance at a figure of 9 gigaWatts should tell you that they're not going to need teraWatts of electricity). Rounding up, their total fossil fuel usage rounds up to 60 billion kW
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If whatever mystery thing you're cryptically alluding to (prickly pears maybe?) works out, great. We can burn the ethanol in power plants to generate electricity to power electric cars.
Re: Shed no tears (Score:2)
It's weird that climate, infrastructure, English as a language, and workforce aren't factors. While a low tax rate is attractive, it's odd that these ordinarily important factors for data centres aren't considered by these companies. You're not engaging in emotionally self-validating hyperbole, are you?
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Through elaborate inversion schemes they don't pay their 12.5% corporation tax; instead some only pay ~2.5%
The ordinary people of Ireland have little say about who gets to build datacentres here, all they can do is object if one is being planned in the area - one Apple datacentre was famously denied planning permission not so long ago.
Since we are in t
nuclear power plants (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't see any mention of building a nuke plant for these data centers. It's a perfect match, data centers have a steady load and nuclear power works best for a flat load.
One catch is that Ireland passed a no-nukes law some time ago.
Some thoughts:
https://www.world-nuclear-news... [world-nuclear-news.org]
https://www.irishtimes.com/opi... [irishtimes.com]
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/... [www.rte.ie]
Ireland still burns peat for electricity, so they have some issues meeting zero carbon goals in addition to the data center problem.
Re:nuclear power plants (Score:5, Informative)
Totally impractical. Ireland would have to first create a nuclear regulator and staff it with qualified people. Then it would need to invite bids to build and operate the plant, and also to procure, store and ultimately dispose of the waste.
Right now in Europe, the only game in town is EDF. Nobody else wants to build nukes, and even EDF isn't very keen on them. If you guarantee their profits by fixing the strike price extremely high they might agree to it. Their usual estimate is 10 years for a new plant in a country with existing nuclear infrastructure, although current projects that were supposed to take 10 years are now looking at 20 to get up and running.
So realistically Ireland could spend an absolute fortune on a nuclear plant that will be ready in 20+ years, or they could just carry on investing in renewable energy. Many of these datacentre providers are keen to be renewable anyway, and there is a lot of untapped off-shore capacity around Ireland. They could be big exporters.
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It doesn't matter EDF is in Europe. We live in global economy and Ireland can buy the nuke from anyone – USA, China, Korea, Czechia, Russia etc.
Poland is slowly achieving its first nuclear power plant, it will probably be built by GE Hitachi (if they manage to offer best bribes).
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You think getting the Chinese to run Ireland's nuclear energy is a good idea?
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They have over a dozen of nuclear power stations. They are going to double this number within a decade. China also plans to build another 30 reactors in cooperating countries.
Yes, I think China has both know-how and political standing to be a good provider of nuclear power in Ireland.
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Ireland could instead break with the overly restrictive nuclear restriction committees that plague much of Europe and America, and instead have a regulator that seeks the ultimate good for the country. Ireland could embrace new nuclear designs that are much less expensive both to purchase and to operate. But Ireland will do none of this because of the entrenched interests that have a stranglehold on the country.
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I didn't see any mention of building a nuke plant for these data centers.
Nukes are four times the price of wind and take 15 years to build.
There is no reason to believe another nuke project will be less of a debacle than Hinkley or Vogtle.
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Nukes are four times the price of wind and take 15 years to build.
It doesn't matter if it costs four times the cost of wind and takes 15 years to build. People need power when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.
Ireland will build more nuclear power plants.
Any issues of long build times and costs can be worked out in time as they develop the technology. If other nations can get average build times in the 4 to 6 year range then so can Ireland. If other nations can get nuclear power cheaper than coal then so can Ireland.
There is no reason to believe another nuke project will be less of a debacle than Hinkley or Vogtle.
There's no reason to believe that an
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There are no nuclear plants on the island of Ireland at the moment so I can't see how they are going to build *more* of them.
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I didn't see any mention of building a nuke plant for these data centers.
Nukes are four times the price of wind and take 15 years to build.
There is no reason to believe another nuke project will be less of a debacle than Hinkley or Vogtle.
There's plenty of reason to think it'll be less of a debacle. That is, if Ireland pays the French to build it.
It doesn't even have to be located in Ireland,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Same in the Netherlands (Score:5, Interesting)
Local municipal authorities invite data centers over.
They gain billions of subsidies.
For example, a new Meta datacenter in the town of Zeewolde, approved by the pro-environment party, no less, to service the Middle East and Africa will get 12 billion euro (about 13.2 billion US$) in subsidies over the next twenty years.
Also, it will take up the power from a great many wind turbines.
If you ever see in the news:
'the wind turbines will provide energy for X households', that is always a lie.
They are paid for by tax money from those households, but they will provide power to exactly zero households.
They provide power to data centers from foreign companies to serve other countries in turn, heavily subsidised by us.
Re:Same in the Netherlands (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure the roughly 100 jobs a datacenter creates will make up for all that. /s
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So don't do that.
You appear to be complaining about something that is only within domestic control. So fix it!
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These municipal governors of such towns are unskilled in politics, unskilled in anything, and easily bribed with a trip to the US and a T-shirt with the brand name on it.
National government should step in.
They are more skillful and more careful about giving billions to the US in exchange for a T-shirt and a holiday, but they elected to hand more independence to the munic
start with an crypto mining ban! (Score:3)
start with an crypto mining ban!
What's more important? CO2 targets or modernity? (Score:2)
This quote I think encapsulates very nicely the conundrum of the modern climate movement. On the one hand, it is obvious that demand for electric power is going to increase. But what if that comes at the price of not being able to meet CO2 targets? Then what? Which is more important? And which goal will be chosen, whether it is "more important" or not?
I'll opine on the last question first: which wi
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Power generation in France is mostly nuclear would be the obvious answer.
Tidal power (Score:2)
Though less well endowed than the UK with great sites for tidal power, Ireland should start to make use of this source of energy. Of course it does result in the orbit of the moon being altered a bit; the raising of that as a concern would reveal who has any real understanding of risks ;)
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It won't happen. It would be seen as 'unsightly', and perhaps 'presents a possible danger to fish and birds'.
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The trouble with tidal power is that it's always 10 years from commercial reality. And if you're going to wait, you might as well wait for fusion power.
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Nah - it's a lot better than that.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-sc... [bbc.com]
If anything like the research spending had been put into tidal power as has been into nuclear, both fusion and fission, then we'd have had it years ago.
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Problem for the moment as I understand it is the best sites for tidal are almost all in Northern Ireland. I would expect there is decent options of pumped storage in Ireland mind you so that should help with It's not like the place is flat or for that matter short of water.
Charge for bulk use. (Score:2)
Normally things get cheaper when you buy more. However, this is not a good thing for electricity use. The ideal solution would be change the price structure so that the more electricity you use, the more you pay per Watt.
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The part you are missing is that they are using lots of power. This either means additional pollution or someone else isn't able to use it... which means additional pollution.
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You're thinking the US Postal Service, electric providers in the US do give some discounts but they make it up in large consumption and monthly, static fees. I had a house that had a $60/mo "Customer Service Charge" just for having the service, never mind how much the usage rate was.
Modern life (Score:2)
And earlier (emphasis mine):
Maybe modern life can be improved to use less power?
They need more bateries (Score:1)
economics seeks opportunity (Score:2)
Ireland created a tax-free haven and now somebody's astonished that it attracted high-tech, power-hungry businesses? Color me shocked.
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Ireland has never been tax-free. There are lower taxes than other jurisdictions for certain types of corporate activity, which has brought much business. But in general, taxes are fairly high.
I don't see the problem (Score:2)
Surely they are charging them enough money for this power to make out like bandits, right?
Enough to build out more renewable capacity and battery storage for the data centers and local populace.
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The problem is that constructing a 1GW electricity plant is a slow and capital intensive business. We're talking decades and billions (see https://www.eia.gov/analysis/s... [eia.gov]). It's not something that changes overnight.
But data centres can move to new locations relatively quickly if the economics look better. Server farms get a technology refresh about every 3 years, and the new hosts can be located in whichever country offers them the best deal.
So no government wants to spend billions on additional generat
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Surely they are charging them enough money for this power to make out like bandits, right?
Enough to build out more renewable capacity and battery storage for the data centers and local populace.
Of course they aren't.
And don't call me Shirley.
Irish datacentre risk (Score:2)
It was pointed out a few years back the Ireland was inherently a risky place to open large datacentres because we've failed to build a reliable, expandable energy grid. There's no nuclear power in Ireland. Although there is natural gas off the coast, it is not being exploited and probably won't be because of public opposition. We seem to have a mindset here of "someone else will take care of it" and a lack of pragmatic people who will work to ensure a stable supply of electricity, among other things. Irelan