London grid crunch delays new housing amid datacenter boom Access to electricity has become a major source of delay for housebuilding in London, and datacenters are inevitably tied up in this, leading to calls for greater oversight of energy and construction planning so that they keep pace with demand. A report published on Monday by the London Assembly, the elected body that holds …
Planning committees have no say in the road capacity issue really. They can give an opinion, but if the highways authority say the road can take it then they are deemed the professionals and woe betide you try and refuse an application on that basis. When, not if, it goes to appeal, the planning authority will lose and pay costs.
Solution: big datacentres must provide their own power (and water) resources OR start paying into the general fund for this i.e. taxes. No more offshoring profits before working out how much tax to pay. Also applies to anyone paying "parent companies" for rights to use their name. After all, they use public money in order to provide healthcare and our paid-for educated staff.
>Solution: big datacentres must provide their own power
That's what's happening in freedomland Texas.
With no functional electrical grid and a ban on communist central planning - innovative free marketeers are installing "temporary" (unpermitted) on-site gas turbine generators.
ie jet engines in freight containers in parking lots, should be fine in West London. They have Heathrow, they won't mind a few 1000s of engines at take off thrust
OR start paying into the general fund for this i.e. taxes
That would be nice, but government disagree, and all the bit barn developer needs to do is whisper "AI", and they'll be in line for power subsidies paid for by the rest of us.
Energy = growth. No energy = no growth. Energy is an input into everything, from steel to cement to fertiliser. Expensive energy = expensive goods. Cheap energy = cheap goods.
America's fracking boom has resulted in an enormous supply of natural gas at low prices, creating enormous economic prosperity. In the UK, fracking is banned and we've effectively stopped exploiting the North Sea. Meanwhile under New Labour we had a decade of no nuclear plants being built, and our renewable energy boom has been completely stymied by the inability of national grid to connect anything up.
It's all self inflicted.
It's not the fracking ban that's the problem.. It's wasting energy on giant water-evaporators that produce little to no to negative actual value.. And it's the perverse system of electricity markets and subsidies that reward shyster operators at our expense. Setting the price for all generators as that of the highest bidder. Subsidising wind farms for excess generation in the wrong place at a time when we don't need it (they should be paid only for producing what power is needed - encouraging them to invest in building their own storage, NOT collecting curtailment subsidies). Frequency-response markets designed to stabilise the grid but which actually create a mechanism for dishonest companies to be rewarded by destabilising it.. Subsidising Drax for being the worst polluter in the UK. etc. etc..
The other thing I forgot to mention there btw (and couldn't edit due to a Reg service interruption), is the shortage of electricity distribution. There is a global shortage of "Grain Oriented Electrical Steel" as well as copper, which are the basic materials of grid transformers, and one major reason why new electrical infrastructure is so difficult and expensive to build right now.
Datacentres are directly contributing to this shortage, because they require their own substations, even if they have on-site generation.
Datacentres are being given priority for critical infrastructure that is in shortage, leading to a shortage of housing and an increase in overall bills, as "network costs" begin to dominate our electricity prices, not just the daft markets I mentioned in my above post.
Even when we do have the raw materials, we have NIMBY anti-pylon landowners confounding infrastructure builds, insisting on infeasible and expensive underground cables (which are fundamentally inefficient due to the capacitive leakage of HV AC cables over long distances)
The sooner the AI bubble bursts, the sooner we can have affordable electricity and housing again. Keeping the bubble going via Fracking is a terrible idea.
This is one reason I truly believe in my heart that we need to build a bunch of these bit barns further from London. Here in south-west Wales we have a shedload of renewable energy hitting the grid, we will be one of the last places to run out of water, and building the infrastructure required to get all that electricity into England is deeply unpopular.
It is much easier to move data than electricity, so why not build datacentres where the resources are?
It is much easier to move data than electricity, so why not build datacentres where the resources are?
Search on the terms new data centres wales, and you'll find that somebody has already had that idea, and various bodies are doing something about it. Obviously they'll have to compete with other DC locations for load, if the economics work then they'll be fine, if they don't then it'll just be another failed investment.
However, what is the one thing South Wales really needs? I'd suggest it isn't bit barns, it is a solid economy with a good number of long term jobs at all pay levels. A few bit barns knocked up on the old Ford Bridgend site aren't going to be helping out very much.
insisting on infeasible and expensive underground cables (which are fundamentally inefficient due to the capacitive leakage of HV AC cables over long distances)
Long distance underground and/or underwater (should) use DC not AC. See cross-chanel/North Sea/Irish Sea connectors.
"we have NIMBY anti-pylon landowners confounding infrastructure builds"
Well... some are, sure, but some have a point. The reason why some will object to those pylons is where they're placed, the access/disruption involved in placing them and to maintain them, and the impact they have on the environment. This is because those who propose the pylons generally draw a straight line across the land and don't give a figs arse as to where each pylon lands. Unless it's in water or the middle of a road (when Highways might step in and say 'No!'), when they might take note. This is in contrast to following natural breaks or lines in the land (hedgerows, following roads etc) which may increase the length of the cable run, but can improve access, reduce impact and means they're not plopping a bloody great pylon in the middle of a corn field (note: With 24hr / 365 day access to the pylon required so that's a track out there, gates etc.)
It's actually an old argument but futile because the national grid doesn't care and has regulatory powers to just go do what they want UNLESS it's blocked by the courts, which is why you get so much NIMBY activity.
The answer, if you missed it, is to work together with landowners to route the grid along easier access paths. After all, the farmers/land owners either get paid rent for the use of their land, or they get paid out for the transfer of ownership. It's just where that plot of land sits that can be a massive headache, and not just some minor inconvenience.
Obviously, those are the ones who have a point with their objections. Then you just have the regular 'I don't like how they look' crowd. The problem is they get the focus of the media rather than those with a genuine reason to object.
@cyberdemon; There's a lot of truth in your comment, but worth noting that increasingly renewables are funded by CfDs, which mean that the generator gets paid at a fixed rate, not the system marginal price. With more and more generation under CfDs the wholesale market is starting to lose its historic price setting role.
"The sooner the AI bubble bursts, the sooner we can have affordable electricity and housing again. "
Errmmm, no. Unfortunately, due to the idiotic design* and pricing** of CfDs, these bake in ultra high prices*** for decades**** to come, and worse still CfDs are index linked even for assets where most of the costs are up front capex, such as wind or nuclear.
* Well done Tories
** Well done Tories and Labour
*** Have fun here
**** Originally most CfDs were 15 years, government have just pushed that to twenty years. For Hinkley C, the CfD runs until 2063, all index linked.
If anybody has any doubts what a catastrophic mess UK energy policy is, then they need to read the work of the hugely respected energy expert Professor Sir Dieter Helm. Maybe start with this.
It wasn't just nu labour, the tories had 14 years of doing nothing too
In fact the problem has been known about for over 20 years with the expected lifetime of our nuclear power stations all ending around 2025-2030, but the politicians decided to kick the problem down the road because it was too difficult to deal with now
And now we're paying for it in increased energy bills and a more unreliable grid.
Just wait for a nice calm spell this January combined with a station like drax going offline for any reason... then we're relying on french nuclear with the hope they dont put priority on domestic supply.........
I'm not sure he's even in charge of that party any more. Sure, it's rumour, but allegedly he's been pushed aside with the manifesto that they won't have a leader, but something closer to a council made up of regular members.
That's after kicking out a quarter of their members, and the various other fractures that have shown up as a result (source: BBC article, so may not be exactly accurate - be interesting to see what alternative sources have to say).
"Just wait for a nice calm spell this January combined with a station like drax going offline for any reason"
Doesn't need to be a calm spell - look at what happened to Spain/Portugal. Power SURGE shut their grid down because the winds were too perfect.
But some countries have woken up and realised they need to diversify their power and have backups - Germany being one after they'd closed all coal, oil, gas and nuclear plants. Then they had to go to France to beg for Nuclear generated power to help cover them.
Energy = growth. No energy = no growth. Energy is an input into everything, from steel to cement to fertiliser. Expensive energy = expensive goods. Cheap energy = cheap goods.
If you haven't already, you should check out the work of Dr Tim Morgan which looks at the "energy cost of energy". Rather depressing, and I hope that he's wrong, but his theories are based on a lot of evidence.
"In the UK, fracking is banned"
Even if it wasn't, the economic potential for fracking onshore is limited due to the UK's geology, land use, and structural inability to do anything cheaply. So whilst there's actually quite a lot of shale gas, it wouldn't be a low cost resource, and even the most optimistic estimates indicate that with unfettered shale gas development we'd still be importing 80% of our gas requirements for the next thirty years.
If the UK wants to exploit domestic fossil fuels, then underground coal gasification is likely to be a better avenue than shale gas. Good luck convincing the hippies, and even ignoring that the economics still need to work in our high cost, low output economy.
I don't see why all this stuff has to be in London. Why can't we put all the FinTech sector in giant barges tethered to wind turbines out in the North Sea? The execs can just sail out in their gin palaces for Board Meetings. Use the waste heat (and other "by products") to fuel prawn farms for them to live on. Then we can put nice trees and parks in the big cities.
Ask AI for advice on home decoration ... of boil a kettle for a cup of tea / cook a meal / heat your home etc.
The UK electricity grid is reaching the point of collapse with unreliable "green" energy supply plus ageing nuclear assets and the shutdown of oil / coal / gas fired station.
A goodly chunk of this is down to the dogma of the high priest of Net Zero -- David "Bacon Buttie" Milliband, another politico with a degree in PPE and no comprehension of reality.
We're 25 years behind where we should be with nuclear energy and more solar farms & wind turbines is not the answer.
As someone who spent over 20 years modelling gas dispersion, I can assure you that there will be a period of 4 - 6 weeks in the winter period when there is virtually no wind and equally little sun with the country sitting under a stable temperature inversion.
Bringing more jobs and economic growth to the area doesn't do you much good if you can't build more housing to accommodate them.
So for existing residents it not only increases their electric bill but makes housing more expensive to twist the knife further.
And I'm not sure what "economic growth" a DC brings to an area. Some business rates (usually on a discount), some temporary construction jobs that'll go to big contractors rather than locals, and then about as many permanent jobs at similar pay as a new Lidl store.
I think I'd rather have the new Lidl store.
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