The rush of data centres coming to Australia will consume almost as much power from the electricity grid in a decade as all households in New South Wales and Victoria do today, the latest energy market forecast has found.
The Australian Energy Market Operator considered the expected energy demands of 225 known projects at various stages of development that want to hook up to the national electricity market, saying even with high uncertainty over how many proceed, it now expects a surge in power demand far larger than its estimates even a year ago.
There are 165 data centres already in operation across the national electricity market, which covers all states and territories except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Those data centres are consuming about 3 per cent of electricity supplied to the grid, but in just 10 years AEMO expects energy-hungry data centres to consume 13 per cent of power demand — even after accounting for the high cancellation rate of projects in the pipeline.
That amounts to 34TWh (terawatt-hours) of electricity from the grid by 2036, almost as much as the 38TWh consumed by every home in NSW and Victoria today.
Just a year ago, AEMO forecast that data centres would not consume that much power until some time after 2050, and even under its “accelerated transition” forecast, estimated data centres would consume about 24TWh by mid-2035.
While the outlook is uncertain, particularly after 2030, AEMO has documented a data centre rush over the past 12 months, with the number of known data centres in development more than doubling since last year from 97 to 225.
