Internet giants in favour as Ireland tightens rules on datacentres

Battery systems

Microsoft, Ireland’s largest datacentre operator, presaged the premier’s words with a declaration about battery systems it had been developing in collaboration with US-Irish power conglomerate Eaton. It was also working with EirGrid, the Irish state-owned grid operator that lobbied for a moratorium last year, with claims that datacentres would starve the grid of capacity unless Ireland’s grid regulator helped it find some way to temper demand.

EirGrid raised the alarm on power consumption after its own botched investments in Ireland’s power grid precipitated a power crisis last year. That and other handicaps left Ireland’s electricity grid short of 2,000 megawatts of electricity generating capacity – more than is used by Ireland’s entire datacentre industry, and almost half the peak power demand of the entire country.

The operator had meanwhile been nurturing a variety of international engineering firms in pioneering efforts to build batteries to store renewable energy and help power datacentres. Eaton and Enel X, an Italian power management firm with which it is collaborating, are among them.

Ireland’s booming data industry has, however, generated competition for scarce land, and for contracts to reserve limited capacity on the electricity grid, as developers vie for the resources the internet giants need to build more industrial, “hyperscale” datacentres and satisfy growing demand for data services.

“The hyperscalers don’t like that – they would prefer to get their own power and do their own thing,” David McAuley, founder of research firm Bitpower, told Computer Weekly.

Cloud corps and government officials branded Ireland’s entrepreneurial developers “speculators”, who had created an artificial power crisis by securing contracts for grid capacity in the hope, they implied, of subletting it to the cloud corporations.

The speculators held grid capacity they weren’t using, while other companies that wanted to actually use the capacity were now being told they could not have it. There was no datacentre crisis, they told the moratorium consultation convened last year by Irish grid regulator the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU). The crisis was EirGrid’s deficient supply and its mismanagement of the electricity market, they said.

Usage revelation

Ireland’s problem was illustrated by the revelation that datacentres used only 25% of the capacity they reserved on the grid. The majority of power declared to be critically short was merely set aside.

Grid capacity is under-utilised, said McAuley, because the firms that hold it cannot usually control whether customers rent computing power, nor how much they actually use when they do. 

Three-quarters of Ireland’s capacity is held by cloud corps, according to Bitpower. Retail and wholesale companies hold the rest. But in Ireland they typically sell their capacity to the cloud corps anyway, said Garrett McClean, an executive director at real estate firm CBRE.

Implementing CRU’s regulatory squeeze this year, EirGrid tore up about 30 applications developers had made to secure power for datacentres they hoped to build in the next decade. It refused to identify them.

But they included “hyperscalers, carpetbaggers, speculators, real estate investors and anyone who has got a bit of land and an electricity connection,” Garry Connolly, president of industry association Host In Ireland, told Computer Weekly after EirGrid leaked details of the cancellations to the Irish press.

To complicate matters, it can take 10 years for a firm to build a datacentre once it has secured a reservation for grid capacity, according to EirGrid.

Utilising reserved capacity

The cloud corporations ignored requests for comment, but Facebook parent Meta used nearly 70% of capacity reserved at its hyperscale datacentre in Ireland last year, something that became apparent after it recently disclosed the power consumption of its hyperscale datacentres. However, the firm took five years to build the datacentre to utilise its reserved capacity. In 2018, it used only 21% of its contracted power, by Computer Weekly’s calculations. In 2017, it used 0.1%, though year-by-year, its utilisation grew considerably.

The cloud corporations told the CRU it should reform Ireland’s electricity market to penalise companies that held capacity but did not use it quickly. EirGrid and the CRU claimed applications for grid capacity had become rampant.

Yet with scant evidence from either the industry or the regulator and operator, it was hard to follow the finger of blame in Ireland.

Parroting EirGrid’s critique of growth last year, the CRU justified its squeeze on growth by claiming they used an unreasonable amount of energy in relation to the economic benefits they bring, and a disproportionate amount in comparison with other industries.

The industry, of which its datacentres are an integral part, were the engine that kept Ireland’s economy growing through its closedown at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, according to official figures published by Eurostat.

It is a primary reason for predictions that it will be the fastest-growing economy in the world for the next few years.

EirGrid portrayed industry growth as a problem, though it has forecast that growth since at least 2018, and as recently as 2020 stated it was no problem at all.

Datacentres should not be singled out for scrutiny or made into scapegoats, Taoiseach Martin, the internet giants, and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) all stressed, in apparent reference to CRU and EirGrid’s assertions, and the furore that has raged subsequently in press and parliament.

Datecentres kept the country running digitally during its coronavirus lockdown, and are now helping the rest of the economy as it transitions from the physical, fossil-fuelled processes of the past to more energy-efficient, digital means, such as remote meetings, digital public services and computer-enhanced business processes.

EirGrid and CRU’s assertions, however, premised on selective analysis, singled out datacentres and withheld information about the power reservations in Ireland’s giant manufacturing sectors.

Ireland nevertheless had capacity left for no more than about three datacentres, said the government policy, to a total of about 300MW, outside Dublin. Ireland would give existing operators preference over it. "We have to avoid speculative datacenters - ones that are built and then are looking for clients. That's something we're not in favour of," Martin said in Japan.

Ireland would meanwhile pursue its plan to build offshore windpower generators, to replenish its deficient, fossil fuel-dominated electricity supply, and meet a target to generate 80% of its supply from renewable sources by 2030.

Catching up with demand

Speaking again to journalists in Singapore a fortnight ago, Martin portrayed Ireland’s non-moratorium as a respite, of just “two or three years”, for Ireland’s windpower industry to catch up with datacentre demand, according to a press conference transcript his office released to journalists.

His policy singled hyperscale datacentres out for favour, by definition if not by name, for their longstanding investments in windpower, for their contribution to the Irish economy, for building industrial-scale electric batteries into the electricity grid, for systems by which they propose moving their computer processing loads around their global infrastructure to wherever renewable energy is most plentiful at any given time, and for their public commitments to become zero emitters of greenhouse gasses.

Ireland’s policy even made the CRU’s non-moratorium more stringent. Where the regulator said new datacentres must generate their own power onsite, DETE said fossil-fuel generators would not be permitted. Battery storage was the only alternative if a developer did not simply build next to a renewables farm.

Hyperscalers had protested the sanctions would force datacentres to build fossil-fuel generators, while Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency insisted windpower expansion would keep pace with demand without any intervention.

Martin said favoured companies would now “take great comfort” from Ireland’s guarantee that it would have the windpower they sought when the current crisis passes in five years’ time.