As AI becomes an undeniable integration in our everyday lives, it’s also a major factor in driving the surge of Data Centre construction projects in the UK. The UK’s digital infrastructure is relying on more data centres to be built to store and manage data. However, where there is a rise in the demand of building more data centres, there’s also the expected spike in energy usage that must be addressed.
According to Pulsant, producing Chat GPT-3 alone produced the same amount of emissions produced by 123 gasoline-powered cars driven for a year.
Chief executive of the National Grid, John Pettigrew, has said that data centre power usage would increase six-fold in the next decade. This increase has been attributed to AI and quantum computing and will eventually cause strain on the grid if proper infrastructure isn’t delivered on time. Currently, data centres utilise nearly 1% of total UK electricity use.
The strain on the grid isn’t the only concern for this growing sector. Data Centres will have to adapt to help reach the Net-Zero 2050 policy implemented by the UK Government. While many data centres are shifting towards renewable energy sources, the pace of this transition is slower than the growth in demand for data services.
Data Centre Construction Projects in the UK
Barbour ABI’s vast project database has identified 72 data centre projects that are due to start in the next 12 months. See below for highlighted projects with details and links for the projects and companies on the Barbour ABI platform. Don’t have a subscription? Get in touch to get 10 free data centre project leads today.
600MW London Data Centre Campus
The 600MW London Data Centre Campus located on East London’s green belt in Havering, is due to start June of 2025. This £1.7bn project faced opposition from environmentalists and the local council due to the development on the green belt.
The client of the project, Digital Reef, has announced that it will be a ‘zero carbon facility’ which will see a large 300-acre ‘ecology park’ built at the site for local resident use. Digital Reef has promised on-site renewable power generation and battery capacity to balance the grid. Search Project ID 12673017 on the Barbour ABI platform for more information and updates.
Equinix 30MW LD14 Data Centre
In May of 2024 Equinix Group Limited’s LD14 Data Centre project located in Slough was granted detail approval. The project is set to see a 5-storey data centre facility with two data halls per floor, on Banbury Avenue. The proposal also outlines that there will be 13 emergency diesel generators (2.8MW combined), and on-site substation.
Search Project ID 12685382 on the Barbour ABI platform for more information and updates.
Slough is turning into quite the data centre Hub as Equinix’s LD7-1 and LD7-2 buildings are also on Banbury Avenue. Alongside Equinix, there are 40 other data centre providers such as Kao, Virtus, Iron Mountain, CyrusOne, Digital Reality, and many others.
The project is set to start at the end of 2024.
Data Centre Projects in Manchester
While we’re seeing the majority of up-and-coming data centre projects sweep London and the southern regions, there are several data centre projects in Manchester due to start in the next year.
Due to start construction in the fourth quarter of 2024, the Broadway House, Columbus Way – 2 Data Centres is currently awaiting detail approval. The project’s application was submitted in 2022. In July of 2024, Architect CBRE Limited was added onto the project. Search Project ID 12665452 on the platform to view more details.
Kao Data Campus has received detail planning approval for the £350m 40MW Data Centre project in Kent Point, Manchester. The project consists of the building of a three-story data centre. This Data Centre is being boasted as the largest, most advanced, and most sustainable in the north of England.
Search Project ID 12706575 on the platform to view more details.
Edge Data Centre Construction Projects on the Rise
Companies such as Equinix, Digital Reality, and nLighten are leading the edge data centre charge in the UK.
Edge data centres are decentralized data centres that are located near the end-user to avoid data latency. Its proximity to the end-user allows the data centre to store, process, analyse, and send directly rather than processing in a cloud or regional data centre.
A rise in these projects introduces more routes for sustainability and energy efficiency, a massive necessity for this sector. Edge data centres are investing in energy-efficient hardware, implementing advanced ventilation systems, and optimising server use to cut energy waste.
Edge data centres could be a key in lifting strain from the grid as well as the environment as they’re also looking towards implementing renewable energy sources to power the facilities.
Data Centre Construction Market Report
The Data Centre Construction Market Report UK 2024-2028 by AMA Research has officially been published.
The report provides powerful insight to this rapidly evolving market. It covers an overall market assessment, and analysis of sub-sectors and product categories.
Key issues covered in the report include:
- Analysis of the factors affecting the data centre market,
- How AI’s rapid development will increase the need for significant processing power
- The battle between data centre construction and prioritising sustainability
What is a Data Centre?
Data centres are centralised facilities that house computing, storage and network equipment. They provide the necessary infrastructure for managing and processing large volumes of data and supporting the IT requirements of organisations.
Data centres can operate more efficiently when they are optimised to a particular workload type. As a result, different types of data centres have emerged.
Cloud Data Centres
Cloud data centres provide computing, networking, and storage resources that can be accessed virtually. Organisations rent virtual space, and, typically, physical cloud data centre facilities are owned and operated by cloud service providers.
Edge Data Centres
Edge data centres are smaller scale and deployed in urban areas. Their primary aim is to offer low latency, a critical requirement for real-time applications, with demand especially driven by mass reliance on IoT and digital services provided over the internet, such as 4K video streaming, 5G mobile or connected vehicle technologies.
An edge data centre may be smaller, generally under 10MW (typically 250kW to 5MW, 20-100 IT cabinets, each holding around 40 servers). They are designed to connect to large or hyper-scale facilities and take the strain off those partners, making more efficient use of processing resources and enabling quicker response times.
Edge data centres lend themselves to modular design, they require less physical space and standby power, and smaller HVAC systems. They have less intensive power demands, less noise and emissions, all suiting them to the urban environment.
Their smaller scale also makes them more affordable from a capex perspective, opening the market to smaller, regional players. Small and medium-sized data centres can be fitted into converted premises such as warehouses, logistics distribution centres, industrial or manufacturing spaces.
AI Training Data Centres
AI Training Data Centres have the computing power to train and develop AI models in a safe environment. These are being sited away from urban areas as their requirement is to maximise processing, without the necessity to minimise latency.
As a rapidly changing field, data centres definitions will continue to grow with new language, such as exascale and megaflops, created in line with new capabilities and scales of data handling.
Conclusion
The expansion of data centres in the UK is crucial for supporting the country’s digital economy but poses significant energy challenges.
To address these issues, there needs to be a concerted effort to enhance energy efficiency, increase the use of renewable energy, and consider innovative solutions like edge data centres.
Without these measures, the energy demands of new data centres could hinder the UK’s progress towards its sustainability goals and place an unsustainable burden on the National Grid.
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