"More than 100 new datacentres in the UK plan to burn gas to generate electricity, some potentially doing so permanently. British officials say this is an inevitable consequence of a years-long wait to connect to the National Grid, and raises an interesting question about the UK's climate targets."
"There's 100GW of datacentre projects in the queue, said Stuart Okin, the director of cyber regulation and AI at Ofgem. Clearly that's not all going to be able to connect [to the grid]. If a project isn't going to get a connection, it is going to have to come up with an alternative method."
"Silvia Simon, the head of research at Future Energy Networks, which represents the UK's natural gas suppliers, said the group had received more than 100 requests for gas connections from datacentre operators in the past two years. These requests amounted to more than 15 terawatt hours of energy each year, she said: enough to power London for roughly four and a half months."
"Gas networks are seeing a lot of interest from datacentre developers looking to secure a gas connection, she said. Not just for resilience, but for primary supply. So this is already an indication that they're really struggling to get through to the electricity networks."
More than 100 new UK datacentres plan to burn gas to generate electricity, with some considering permanent gas use. Officials link the shift to long waits for National Grid connections and the scale of queued datacentre capacity. Ofgem estimates about 100GW of datacentre projects are in the queue, meaning not all can connect to electricity networks. Developers seeking alternatives are turning to gas connections for both resilience and primary power supply. Natural gas suppliers report over 100 requests for gas connections in two years, totaling more than 15 terawatt hours annually. Similar reliance on gas appears in the US, where activists have challenged methane-powered generators tied to AI datacentres.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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