Guest post by Marc Garner, VP, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric UK & Ireland
Ireland has long been a popular location for data centres, in part due to the long-term industrial policy of encouraging high-technology industry clusters around key verticals, including pharmaceuticals, software, web development, and other digital-centric industries. This a strategy which requires both inward investment and indigenous growth, and somewhat inevitably, the availability of resilient IT and data centres, alongside excellent connectivity to the cloud.
There is, however, a downside to having so many large data centres in the country, namely the electrical power that is needed to keep them running. In recent times, we’ve seen a growing criticism from key stakeholders and environmental groups who have questioned the energy demand of the sector, and its impact on the country’s net-zero targets.
Added into this mix, the global surge in wholesale power and gas prices has led to a significant jump in both the unit price and standing charges for households and businesses, something further underlined by Electric Ireland, who last month announced that gas prices are set to increase almost 30% from August.
Amid this backdrop and following a public consultation, in late 2021 Ireland’s electricity network operator – EirGrid – began to notify data centre businesses that they would not provide new connections to Dublin-based facilities until 2028, and that any new applications would be assessed on a ‘case-by case basis’. In response, the sector has openly challenged the ‘estimated’ power consumption surrounding the industry and undertook its own analysis using data from the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The investigation compared statements detailing data centre power demands published by EirGrid with a landmark study of the actual metered electricity consumption of data centres by CSO Ireland. It found the majority of power reserved for data centres during Ireland’s energy crisis was left unused. In fact, data centres consumed only about 25% of the grid capacity that Ireland’s two state-owned grid operators reserve for them.
This argument will of course continue to play out, but it is essential that industry, CRU, and government come together to find collaborative solutions to these challenges without hindering enterprise innovation or GDP.
Further, data centres remain the heart of the digital economy, and as we begin to run metaverse type applications that require higher envelopes of power, and support applications in life sciences, financial services, gaming and streaming, sustainability and resilience will become ever more important to the country’s businesses.
What are prefabricated data centres?
At Schneider Electric, we believe that rather than being a hindrance, data centres can play a key role in unlocking Ireland’s sustainability and resilience ambitions, especially where integration with the grid is concerned. Data centre designs, however, come in many forms, and in recent years they have transformed from traditional bricks and mortar designs to harnessing the power of prefabricated technology.
For many, prefabricated data centres provide a standardised, pre-engineered, and pre-integrated infrastructure system, containing integrated power, cooling, racks and IT that can be delivered as functional building blocks of power, cooling, IT or all-in one data centres. in a secure. These modules are quick to deploy, predictable, and can be deployed for 15% less cost than traditional data centres.
Ireland has long been known as a key location for hyperscale data centre operators, and internet giants across the globe have been able to use the economics of scale offered by prefab, in addition to other technological innovations and the shift towards renewable energy, to increase capacity against the backdrop of prolific demands for data and connectivity.
The average business, however, is facing a soaring demand for data storage and ...