Billy Durie, Global Sector Head of Data Centers at Aggreko, discusses the company’s latest whitepaper, Bridging the Energy Gap for European Data Centres, which outlines the potential for green bridging solutions to address the capacity issues facing European data centers.

Demand for digital services is currently higher than ever, which is in turn fuelling a boom in the construction of new data centers. While this is obviously positive news for those in the sector, grid infrastructure is struggling to keep pace across Europe, leading to significant delays for new projects looking to connect to the grid.

These delays are threatening to stifle the growth of an otherwise prosperous sector and are showing no time of going away any time soon. Stats from the International Energy Agency indicate that data centers and their transmission networks currently account for 1.5% of global electricity demand. With cloud computing and AI only increasing the energy-intensive nature of these facilities, it is clear that this will be a long-term challenge that the sector will need to manage.

The Great Capacity Crunch

Aggreko explores these issues in depth in its latest whitepaper, Bridging the Energy Gap for European Data Centres. As the whitepaper indicates, connection delays are common across Europe. In the UK, new projects are facing wait times of up to 13 years to connect to the grid, while closer to home, strict guidelines have been proposed in Amsterdam to regulate the construction of new facilities.

This challenge, while not new, was once unique to the crowded TIER 1 FLAP-D markets – Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin – though the scale of this issue is such that developing TIER 1 markets such as Madrid are now being affected. Spain and Italy, for instance, have almost 200GW of projects awaiting grid connections.

With the severity of grid delays clear across the continent, it makes sense that stakeholders are now looking to generate their own energy on-site in order to ensure that new projects go ahead without delay. However, this is not without its own challenges.

Primarily, decentralized energy generation must be conducted in a manner that is environmentally friendly in order to ensure that progress towards net zero targets is not set back. This is particularly pressing for data centers operating in urban areas, such as London, Amsterdam, or Madrid, which all have low or ultra-low emissions zone that restrict the use of certain equipment.

Diesel gensets, for example, which have long been used as an accessible and practical option for temporary on-site power generation, are increasingly unsuitable for use in settings such as these, meaning stakeholders must now look further afield for solutions that can bridge the energy gap.

Turning to New Technology

The data center sector has long been recognized as both a leader and an innovator when it comes to tackling environmental challenges, frequently deploying creative solutions and taking advantage of new technologies in order to ensure that the sector continues to grow sustainably.

Here, Aggreko’s whitepaper aims to support the industry’s position on tackling issues in the most environmentally friendly manner possible, by highlighting some of the greener bridging solutions that can help stakeholders take energy provision into their own hands without falling foul of sustainability goals.

Battery energy storage systems (BESS), Stage-V generators, and hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) are all identified as key technologies that can help stakeholders tackle this two-pronged challenge. BESS, for example, is able to capture energy from the grid at times when demand is low, such as at night, and then redeploy this as and when is needed.

Stage-V generators running on HVO, on the other hand, can offer up to a 90% reduction in CO2, particulate matter (PM) and NOx emissions, and are a practical solution for any data center projects under the jurisdiction of a clean air zone. Aggreko is continuing to invest in these technologies as part of its sustainability framework, Energising Change.

The whitepaper also offers a number of sector-specific applications for these technologies, alongside a number of real-life case studies. The report cites the example of a new data center being constructed in Dublin, with a delay on establishing the grid connection threatening to bring the project to a halt. Here, Aggreko supplied 24 x 1MW Stage-V generators, providing 20MVA of power at 20KV. As a result, the project was able to go ahead as planned without disruption, alongside saving 2,107 tonnes of carbon and 786,240 liters of fuel – the equivalent of over €1 million.

Ultimately, while there is no quick solution to grid shortages and delays, taking energy provision into your own hands is the first step to reducing the impact of external factor on new projects. By making use of green bridging solutions for this, as outlined in Aggreko’s whitepaper, the European data center market can continue to reap the rewards of growth while ensuring that this remains sustainable.

For to read Aggreko’s whitepaper, Bridging the Energy Gap for European Data Centres, CLICK HERE.