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IRELAND’S ENERGY DEMAND will shoot up over the next decade due to the spread of data centres across the country – making harder the government’s task of avoiding fines for missed EU renewable-energy targets.
In its recent ‘all-island generation capacity statement’, which includes forecasts to 2026, EirGrid predicted energy demand would be flat in Northern Ireland – but it would continue increasing in the south “largely due to new data centres connecting”.
The semi-state electricity grid operator predicted a 21% increase in total electricity demand in the Republic over the next decade after a fall in demand during the recession years. The need for extra power supply would be centred around the capital.
“A significant proportion of this extra data centre load will materialise in the Dublin region,” the report said.
“Given the lead times associated with transmission reinforcements, generation capacity or equivalent may need to be available in the Dublin region to accommodate this additional demand in the short-term.”
According to EirGrid’s mid-range scenario, 15% of all electricity demand in Ireland will come from data centres by 2026.
A data centre hub
Ireland has become a hub for data centres in recent years, with tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Apple all setting up major European data storage facilities.
The country is seen as an attractive location for the facilities for a range of reasons, including the cool climate, which reduces running costs for heat-generating computers, its connectivity to the US via transatlantic data cables, and a favourable data-protection regime for tech multinationals.
Amazon alone has several data centres in and around Dublin, including three near Tallaght. It is planning new facilities near Dublin Airport and, most recently, a data centre the size of three football pitches at Mulhuddart, in north-west Dublin.
While large data centres are costly to build – involving spending often in the hundreds of millions of euro – once operational they require relatively little money to maintain. Amazon’s proposed Mulhuddart facility is expected to employ only 30 people when completed.
Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor told the Dáil earlier this year that the IDA was currently looking to identify “potential strategic land banks … for the sustainable development of large-scale data centre projects”.
“This study is part of IDA Ireland’s wider strategy to ensure that Ireland and its regions are best able to win and sustain mobile data centre investments of scale,” she said in a written response.
“In recent times companies including Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google have announced significant data centre investments for Ireland and the goal is to ensure that this trend continues.”
Data centre dominance
EirGrid’s report said there was currently about 250 mega-volt amperes (MVA) of installed data centres in Ireland, but another 600 MVA in facilities were at some stage in the connection process. It noted there were inquiries from more than 1,000 MVA of additional data centres.
“Large industrial connections normally do not dominate a country’s energy demand forecast, but this is the case for Ireland at the moment,” the report noted.
Ireland’s increasing demand for energy – both due to the recovering economy and the proliferation of data centres across the country – has put the government on a collision course with EU officials over renewable-energy targets.
The Republic is one of only three countries in the EU – excluding the Brexit-bound UK – that is forecast to miss its agreed renewable energy-generation goal for 2020.
Based on current expectations, Ireland is facing fines of up to €75 million every year that it undershoots its target of obtaining 16% of total energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.
EirGrid noted the only extra electricity supply expected to come online over the next decade was from renewable sources.
“The likelihood of meeting the targets for 2020 will depend largely on how much new wind and biomass can be built and accommodated on the system over the coming years,” it said.
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Written by Peter Bodkin and posted on Fora.ie
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Ah sure we can get Joe / Jane Public to pay extra taxes so the big companies can keep profits
@Mary Murphy:
And how many joe’s and Jane’s work for these companies and get paid by them and spend money in the local economy.
Apple data centre planned for Athenry will use more electricity than Dublin and Wicklow combined and employ a total of 170 people.
And guess what Brian they’ll pay for this electricity with money which is a boost to our economy. I can’t really see what else could have gone into athenry, its hardly a major draw for any business. Why does everyone in this country give out about good news
@Brian Gannon: Apple has committed to purchasing all its power in Athenry from renewable providers. Don’t see that from our Gov or large Irish power hungry multinationals. Google is committed to the same. However its faster to get building permits for data centres and power links than a wind farm. Meanwhile the rural west depopulates…
@Stephen: easiest compromise is put the windfarms off shore. Lovelock (father of the Gaia theory) says this is the best and most efficient use of wind tech. Higher build and maintenance costs but vastly more power generation and they last a lot longer. Also no 14 year CO2 Debt from stripping back the blanket bog. Other multinationals in high-tech I know of are incredibly conscious of their energy responsibility as Apple are. It’s actually the ”older” businesses like agriculture that are doing most of the global warming stuff.
@John O’Driscoll:
50% more efficient but 300%more expensive to build and maintain and at that they have to subsidise onshore windmills to make them viable.
@Mary Murphy: the companies pay for the electricity. Eirgrid need to charge enough to fund new renewable generation capacity. That benefits us all.
@Brian Gannon:
Can you provide facts and figures to back this statement up?
@Stephen:
Well said.
Amazons new data centre , the size of 3 football pitches will only employ 30 people when built. How does this make sense, that such a big area is required for such a low number of jobs.
@Just Me: automation via highly skilled jobs…
@Just Me: they just have to make sure the machines are running. Its a handy number.
@Just Me: that’s another reason to stick them far out in the West where there’s loads of space and few employed in high tech. Keeping the less available land around urban areas for more employment-heavy industries.
@Just Me: Alot of employment in building it though plus all the local venders and specialists subcontracted out on an ongoing basis. Amazon centres are cheap to run relative to other data centres because they use our lovely irish weather to keep the servers cool.
@John O’Driscoll: Problem is there is more infrastructure via available electrical capacity and fibre conductivity in Dublin then there is in the We-isht
@Richard: Still only 30 jobs, no matter how skilled. The focus should be on less for more.
@Donal Proctor: Yes Donal I read all that in the article. My point still stands, an area that size that only creates 30 jobs is to put it literally a waste of space.
@Just Me: You are forgetting all the indirect employment they generate.
@Just Me: What other suggestions have you got for the land? Vast amounts of green space sitting idle around the country which is not being used. Where reasonable id take the employment for building them, the 30 indirect jobs and the 30 direct jobs your parping on about. Its just a pity were so behind the curve in this country we cant build vast solar and wind farms to power the bloody things. Now how much space vs direct employees do they take to run? A data center has a shelf life. In 20 years from now you’ll probably be able to fit one in your pocket. All the tech firms, business companies, banks need server space to store their data.
@Donal Proctor: Two of Amazon’s sites in Tallaght had been vacant for ages, it’s not as if people were queing up to use them.
@Just Me: For comparision, how many people are employed by 3 football pitches?
@Just Me: what dwould you suggest they use the currently unused sites for instead? Or do you think they should employ more people than they need and waste money? There’s a word for people like you its luddite
@Donal Proctor: build it and they will come. Or let the companies build it out in some sort of PPP arrangement. Intel and HP built that whole road section around their respective factories in Leixlip. Bloody nice bit of road an all and built in no time as I heard. The point is there are so many compelling reasons to use the West as Ireland (and Europe’s) leading edge data centre (Silicon Coast) that they WILL come. ”Free” wind and wave energy availability. Loads of labour for construction and to staff an hinterland of local services (altho’ depopulating fast they’ll come home too), closest to Amerikay so least latency/lag in the channels (some market traders exploit the earth’s curve to reduce latency so they can place trades pico-seconds before others and make a percentage); cooler climate including free Venturi Effect potential to use natural wind cooling; magnificent heart-stopping scenery that just goes without saying; I’m SURE there’s more potential in EU law to get some sort of subsidies and grants incentive schemes going in the West North West as it is all disadvantaged especially Donegal. These days if we want to subvent industry by more than a couple million we have to go cap in hand to the Commission and more often than not a PFO results but with the West it might be different.
@John O’Driscoll: Im sold! I think they should hire you as their sales guy ;). I now want to move to the West! Have a good weekend
Maybe if people could sell energy back to the grid, they would invest in solar panels
@Eamonn Dunne: or household wind turbine you don’t even get a grant for those when you do for a solar panel .
@William Bayle:
You would never get planning permission for a household wind turbine, some guy twenty miles away would object.
@P.J. Nolan: You don’t need planning permission for a wind turbine for a house once it meets certain criteria, less than 10 m high, less than 5m diameter, distance from boundaries etc. It’s in the planning exemptions guidelines.
And I’d predict that as more and more we become connected to the Internet of Things with 5G rollout whereby everything connected becomes a portal for everything else going by outside and inside to get connected, each autonomously driving car will itself alone produce in the reason of 4000 gigabytes of data a day, these data centres will only become more prevalent and necessary. Much of the processing will take place there, of data received from devices with relatively low onboard computing power but incredibly fast connections online and sent back to them for use as information. Machine vision, facial recognition, AI, Big Data and everything secured by blockchain. We’re talking Yottabytes here.
Opportunity for the windy West Coast, both to cool the server farms and to generate electricity from wave and wind energy onsite to supplement the gas coal and turf powered main suppliers. And to provide roads and employment to the neglected likes of Donegal, and other western counties that can correctly claim ”Next parish America.”
@John O’Driscoll: some of that almost made sense
@Conor Maher: care to elaborate Conor? Or are you just a randomer chucking insults?
Time for these companies to pay up or ship out.
No more corporate freebies.
How about actually making them pay the corporation tax they owe and use that to sort out their power issues. But no, the powers that be will just tax us again to cover it while the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook laugh all the way to the bank
All my data is stored in one of these centres, somewhere – via the Cloud….
@Fank Pulman: Also the data of banks, governments, international conglomerates, world organisations and the military of many nations. We should be concerned….
@Fank Pulman: All my data is spread about the town lol.
Is it not the case that if such high-tech business is the new wave of the country’s economic social and strategic future that telecommunications which are necessary to keep everything connected are not a strategic state interest? And Eircom’s been broken quite a few years now…
Skynet….
Trump is leader of the free World. Who’s planning that far ahead.
So much I’ll informed comment here. Started by the Journal calling Eirgrid a supply company – they are not they simply plan and manage electricity Transmission- the equivalent of the NRA in terms of roads.
Then we have all the I’ll informed do gooders commenting on something that they half understand.
Please if u want to comment please try to research and understand before you make I’ll informed judgements.
They also use a huge amount of water which has caused concern from citizens and the agriculture industry in water scarce states such as California. The thing about Ireland is we are a perfect base for data centres because of a temperate climate with low seismic activity and loads of water. Which are also conditions favoured by pharmaceutical companies. It ain’t just the tax.
Wind farms are an intermittent form of power. Time for the nuclear option.
@Joe Caulfield: zero carbon. And the lowest level of fatalities of any energy generation industrial player. Quite safe now the pebble bed and fast breeders and very little waste with very little half-life. Expensive to build but your power is free thereafter. James Lovelock thinks they’re the only things can save us from our selves and it may be too late even for that. Build those data centres well back from the water’s edge. Water and electricity don’t do well together uncontrolled.
True John but the econuts are not interested in the solution. They want to exploit the problem so they can force their orthodoxy upon us.
The green lobby believe Renewables + energy efficiency are the way to meet Ireland’s CO2 reduction targets and future needs.
Utter Tosh.
Renewables + energy saving does not take into account population growth, and increase in energy demand created by wealth.
For example, 30 years ago, most households would have had just 1 motor car., and 1 TV set. Nowadays, there are 3-eco cars parked outside every house, which has 10 tv sets.
Windmills run not on wind, but by state subsidies.
Whenever i see the term “Renewables” read instead “Gas power”.
The solution is not Renewables, it is “CO2 Free” energy.
Send the bill to the NSA lol.
John ODriscol you forgot to mention the most important developments and revolution that is happening right now i.e solar panels tiles that is attached to a battery pack to run industry and domestic use any surplus electricity that you have you can sell this surplus to the grid with a tesla power wall. all cars will have a electric motor just to mention a few developments that is happening at the moment.
look up the book written by Tony Seba clean disruption of energy & transportation.
look up the book by Tony Seba energy & transportation
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