Power-hungry data centres scrambling to find enough electricity to meet demand
Data centre developers are expanding across the country, thanks to the surge in cloud computing and an AI boom. While they bring huge economic opportunities, there are concerns about the amount of energy they consume and whether the power grid can cope.
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00:00Australians are creating more data than ever before, but have you ever wondered where it
00:08all goes?
00:09It's been stored in highly secured centers like this one.
00:17Before we can get in, there is an ID check and they take your fingerprints.
00:32Inside this vault, a hotel for computers.
00:37These racks are essentially where our customers house their computing infrastructure.
00:42And how do you make sure these racks are up and running 24-7?
00:45We have our power available 100% of the time.
00:49Which is crucial for the services we've come to rely on.
00:53Whether it's our healthcare, banking services, government services, there's no industry that
00:59isn't reliant on data today.
01:03Just one large data center can consume the same amount of energy required to power 50,000
01:10homes.
01:11Morgan Stanley estimates in total, data centers are currently chewing up 5% of Australia's
01:18power grid.
01:20And that's expected to grow to 8% by 2030, which some say could be underestimated.
01:27I've seen numbers that suggest by 2030, data centers could be anywhere between 5 and 15%
01:34of our electricity demand.
01:36Australia is one of the top five data center hubs in the world.
01:40Across the country, there are 214 centers like this one.
01:44And with the explosion of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, the industry
01:49is expected to grow exponentially.
01:52We believe that we are at the beginning of a massive shift with AI.
01:57We truly believe that we're at the beginning of a change in accelerated compute that could
02:02see demand skyrocket over the next decade.
02:07As the nation races to electrify, with households dumping gas appliances and more people driving
02:15electric vehicles, the grid is already under pressure.
02:19I think Australia is not terribly well placed to cope with that increasing demand.
02:25We are now hitting the difficult stages of the energy transition.
02:29We've got wind and sun and land, but we don't have other clean energy, biomass or decent
02:35amounts of hydro or nuclear.
02:37The director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Bruce Mountain, thinks the data center
02:43boom will make the energy transition more challenging.
02:47Because not just do you need to replace coal-fired generation, you need to build new capacity
02:53to meet rising demand.
02:54If you add a lot more demand and you don't add more supply, then prices go up.
03:01Victoria Energy Retailer and Generator Origin supplies power to about a third of all data
03:07centres in Australia.
03:09The man in charge of these accounts says the company is looking at a range of options to
03:14meet their needs.
03:16And typically we would look at solutions like distributed generation, so wind or solar at
03:21site, storage solutions and backup generation.
03:26And our customers with their forecasts would vary somewhat, but typically those growth
03:31forecasts could be between about 10 and 30 per cent per year.
03:36To meet those energy demands, companies could be strategic about where they build data centres.
03:43One of the interesting features of this data centre growth is that some of the locations
03:48could be more regional and that can match some of the new renewable generation.
03:54Carrying the load as challenges grow on Australia's energy grid.
04:01www.australianenergygrid.com