Such is the demand for access to the already under-strain national electricity grid, some data centre developers have been told they could be waiting up to 10 years for the system to be upgraded to provide them with a connection.
Nathan McWhinnie, head of market intelligence and oversight at Ofgem, said: “In a lot of places, the grid is at capacity. I think sometimes it’s easy to forget the scale of the demand of these connections. These projects are sometimes the size of cities.”
In last week’s Budget, the chancellor announced a British Data Centre Covenant, requiring operators to invest in local communities, create jobs and protect water supplies in return for priority grid connections.
But he also said that where grid connections were unavailable, developers would be permitted to generate their own power on-site.
BBC File on 4 Investigates has discovered that four data centres are already looking at using gas-fired power stations to meet their electricity needs.
If continuously running at full capacity, our calculations show they would require 1.3 gigawatts of power and could produce an estimated 4.1 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year. This could be more than the cities of Manchester, Liverpool and Southampton combined.
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