Data centre energy crunch on the horizon: Gartner

Power utilisation is growing, with Australia facing a three-fold surge in energy demand within eight years.

The future of data centres could be one megawatt compute capacity in a single rack. That’s on the horizon, with groups such as the Open Compute Project pushing a redesign of data centre infrastructure.

“I don't think we're ready to handle this as an industry, as organisations. The physical power density that these racks provide is going to require a complete change in data centres, said Mark Jaggers, senior director analyst, business and technology insights, Gartner.

This shift is largely being driven by power-hungry AI hardware. “Power utilisation is projected to be close to a terawatt for data centres by 2030. It's doubling in the next four years, said Jaggers, speaking at last week’s Gartner IT and cloud conference in Sydney.

“Compute capacity is not going down. The requirements for compute are not going down. Servers are increasing in their density, and so we're increasingly utilising power for servers,” he added.

The need for cooling is growing and is the second largest usage of power in the data centre. Comparing previous major technology step-changes such as the conversion of mainframes, microcomputers, Unix boxes, blade server chassis — Jaggers said nothing comes close to this.

“Each one of those iterations required increasing power density, but it's far more today and in the future than what we've dealt with in the past,” he explained.

In Australia, power utilisation in the next eight years will be three times greater than today’s usage in data centres. “Potentially 8 percent of all power utilisation in Australia will be just for data centres,” he said.

How data centre development is playing out will affect energy demands, capacity and prices. Locally, data centre capacity is mostly concentrated in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra, with 33 to 50 percent of all data centres in Sydney.

“What’s happening is as we build up more capacity, we are pre-leasing a lot of that capacity. So there's about 750 megawatts capacity today in Sydney and 3 percent vacancy rate,” he said.

Even with more capacity, vacancy rates do not increase. “This means co-location prices are rising and contracts are getting less favourable,” Jaggers said.

As a result, organisations may have to shift their strategy away from cloud and co-location services if the capacity is not there to meet their needs. More data centre growth may be planned but there’s still a question mark about power.

“It means that what we're doing from a power perspective, what our co-providers are doing from a power perspective and what the hyperscalers are doing from a power perspective becomes strategic,” he said.

In response, Jagger recommended several courses of action to prepare for a looming power crunch.

Load shedding: Know what workloads you can shed if the grid demands it — and ask your co-location provider the same question.

Site selection: Power availability, not network interconnect, is now the primary consideration for data centre site selection.

Liquid cooling: Start building a plan for liquid cooling — AI infrastructure will likely make it unavoidable.

Water usage: Measure energy and water usage now, before regulators or communities demand it. Move to closed-loop cooling systems and recycle wastewater or harvest rainwater.

Consider secondary and tertiary co-location markets where power capacity is available.

Automate energy monitoring with AI-based tools, but put governance guardrails in place — particularly where data sovereignty is a concern.

“The locations on the grid that they're allowed to expand to and the energy generation sources — all of this is a long-term plan that you have to look at,” he added.