Data centres will command power equivalent to the entire Japanese power grid by 2030. It’s a startling prediction and one that infrastructure futurists, data scientists, software engineers and environmentalists are considering with deep concern.
The latest International Energy Agency (IEA) research has projected that electricity demand from global data centres by 2030 will exceed 900 TWh. For context, that is comparable to the total installed power capacity of the world’s fourth-largest economy – Japan.
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Whether you use artificial intelligence (AI) for assisting with complicated engineering tasks or just like making better graphics for your presentation slide decks, the reality is that AI uses an enormous amount of power.
And not only does it require a lot of power, but it also needs redundancy. If the power supply is interrupted by a primary electrical supply failure, it’s a disaster for those data centres. For data centre users and networks relying on real-time data flow from data lakes, interruptions are computationally catastrophic.
Data centres and diesel
Despite the price of installed battery power becoming more affordable, some data centres are still choosing diesel as their backup emergency power supply. Most of the data centre power draw is for powering servers, but a crucial element of the electricity that flows into a data centre, is cooling.
Calculations might be what uses the most available power distributed to data centres, but cooling is crucial. It might use proportionally less power, but if there’s a failure of the cooling elements in any data centre, it can trigger a total system shutdown or failure.
Redundancy systems are crucial to ensure that thermal management never fails in any data centre. Or that its primary server electricity supply isn’t interrupted, even if there is a grid outage. And that’s where the diesel generator still has immense value. And is seeing increased demand.
Diesel generators provide immediate peak power during a grid emergency, without latency. And that means a data centre’s servers can continue to function, and crucially, that its thermal management systems remain cool, even when the primary power supply is interrupted.
Diesel and defence needs
A decade ago, diesel technology had a big problem. VW became overly creative with the control software for regulating its 2-litre turbodiesel engine during emission testing for the US market. The result was the infamous diesel scandal and a trend of suffocating diesel engine development in Europe.
Some car companies made bold declarations that they would exit their internal combustion powertrains by 2030. Over the last few months, most of those predictions have been retracted and adjusted. It reflects the telling reality that what politicians and policymakers promise, and what the market wants, are rarely in alignment within the complex and dynamic energy environment.
Global demand for diesel engines and installed power sources are healthy. NATO members have committed to significantly increasing their defence spending, which means a phase of new systems that all involve mobility and portable power. Although batteries are crucial as an integrated power source for many military electronics, from vehicles to missile defence, primary powertrains are still almost wholly diesel. And so are the generator sets that power systems in the field.
Germany’s skills shift
From NATO naval power source suppliers to German automotive and commercial transport-grade powertrain OEMs, the demand signals for new diesel engine and generator builds are strong.
German car companies are struggling with mismatched EV capacity, high-cost legacy labour contracts, and software engineering misadventures. But the outlook is more promising for skilled German machinists and technicians in the diesel powertrain space.
Diesel solution suppliers in Europe are facing strong demand for their technologies, ranging from data centres to defence. It’s almost an unbelievable scenario from the early 2020s, when EVs were poised to dominate the market, with diesel powertrain suppliers becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Industry scale to meet demand
Skilled German powertrain workers and diesel technicians can rapidly meet production needs, transitioning seamlessly from legacy car industry OEMs to specialist diesel technology specialists.
Germany’s automotive industry and IG Metall are both under pressure from miscalculations in EV demand. The need for more diesel technology solutions to support pioneering data assets and NATO’s defence surge is a hedge nobody in the diesel industry could have imagined five years ago.
The real-world outcome is that data centre capacity, stability, and redundancy, along with an increasingly fraught European security situation, have created a surge in demand for advanced diesel technologies and generator installations. Much to the potential benefit of Germany’s skilled diesel labour market.
