Projects
Projects: Projects for Investigator |
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| Reference Number | NIA_WWU_02_35 | |
| Title | Understanding Future Energy Loads from Data Centres | |
| Status | Completed | |
| Energy Categories | Other Power and Storage Technologies(Electricity transmission and distribution) 50%; Fossil Fuels: Oil Gas and Coal(Oil and Gas, Refining, transport and storage of oil and gas) 50%; |
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| Research Types | Applied Research and Development 100% | |
| Science and Technology Fields | PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Computer Science and Informatics) 60%; ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) 20%; ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering) 20%; |
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| UKERC Cross Cutting Characterisation | Not Cross-cutting 100% | |
| Principal Investigator |
Project Contact Wales and West Utilities |
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| Award Type | Network Innovation Allowance | |
| Funding Source | Ofgem | |
| Start Date | 01 September 2024 | |
| End Date | 30 April 2025 | |
| Duration | ENA months | |
| Total Grant Value | £152,648 | |
| Industrial Sectors | Energy | |
| Region | Wales | |
| Programme | Network Innovation Allowance | |
| Investigators | Principal Investigator | Project Contact , Wales and West Utilities |
| Other Investigator | Project Contact , SGN - Southern England Project Contact , SGN - Scotland |
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| Industrial Collaborator | Project Contact , SGN |
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| Web Site | https://smarter.energynetworks.org/projects/NIA_WWU_02_35 |
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| Objectives | A literature review will be undertaken of hydrogen developments in the UK Data centre industry to understand current ambitions, barriers to deployment, and the geographical implications of using existing gas network infrastructure to supply hydrogen to Data Centres.The project will undertake a demand assessment from Data Centres across the WWU & SGN footprint, focussing on southwest England and Wales as case studies, to gain a deeper understanding of opportunities and barriers. In turn this can inform the infrastructure requirements and any repurposing of assets for hydrogen around them, with recommendations for further steps to fill evidence gaps.This project will help inform early thinking around the development of the Data Centres and set the direction for further work in the WWU and SGN network. Learning will be directly applicable to other UK GDNs and associated Data centre infrastructure and supply chain needs.The findings will be translated into a series of distinct case studies exploring the likely outcomes of converting a number of existing data centres to be powered via gas/blend or 100% hydrogen. A final report will then provide technical background to the analysis carried out, citing relevant resources and assumptions.Measurement Quality Statement: The literature review will establish milestones for the identification, acquisition, and review of relevant data sources, ensuring comprehensive coverage of the research topic. The project will employ systematic and rigorous methods for selecting and assessing the quality of literature sources, ensuring the accuracy, reliability, and relevance of the data obtained. Quality control procedures will be implemented to monitor the consistency and validity of data extracted from the selected literature sources. This will also be covered by Apollos QA procedure to ensure the relevant checking and approval process is undertake The project will follow established guidelines and standards for data extraction, synthesis, and analysis, ensuring transparency and reproducibility in the review process. Measures will be taken to address any potential biases or limitations within the literature sources, ensuring a balanced and comprehensive analysis. The project will document the process of literature selection, data extraction, and analysis, providing transparency and enabling future researchers to replicate or build upon the findings. Statistical methods and quality assurance techniques will be applied to evaluate the robustness and reliability of the synthesized data, ensuring the accuracy of the literature reviews conclusions. The project will conduct periodic reviews and evaluations to assess the overall quality of the literature review, identifying areas for improvement and refinement. Supporting information, such as data summaries, annotations, and citations, will be provided to enable potential readers to understand the literature sources and their relevance to the review.The project is rated low in the common assessment framework detailed in the ENIP document after assessing the total project value, the progression through the TRL levels, the number of project delivery partners and the high level of data assumptions. No additional peer review is required for this project. Stakeholder engagementStakeholder engagement will form the foundation of this project and provide the data and insight necessary to inform this work. Successful stakeholder engagement will be crucial to gaining the mostvalue from this project, through the provision of accurate data and insight into the future of the data centre sector. We will complete structured interviews with key stakeholders with expertise in energy network infrastructure, development strategy, and installation, and Data Centre operation, including; WWUs Asset Data & Strategy, Net Zero And Sustainability, and Network Analysis teams Vantage Data and other data centre operators across the WWU and SGN network Distributed Energy Connections National Grid ESO & FSOThe project team propose to complete 10 structured interviews with key stakeholders but are willing to look at more if necessary to obtain the best output from the study. This will be agreed with WWU and SGN upon project award. By reaching out to stakeholders across both network areas we will obtain a more diverse poolBaseline ReviewLiterature review of academic journals, industry reports, and institutional publications to understand the following key questions:1. What is the current state of the UKs Data Centre Sector?We will first map out data centre locations nationally and across the WWU and SGN region using GIS, looking at how this distribution has changed historically and why, highlighting the varying scales of data centre development from small institution-specific facilities, to regional campus hubs and hyperscale data centres.We will summarise the existing dominant technologies that determine the bulk of data centre energy requirements, from computing and storage infrastructure, to cooling plant, with a particular focus on the specific resilience and backup power strategies critical for data centre security.2. What are the key UK energy infrastructure constraints?Data Centres significant power requirements mean they are often particularly sensitive to network constraints. We will provide an overview of these key electricity constraints, not only looking at system-wide capacity issues, but also highlighting the physical (where is the network?), the temporal (what are the trends and projections of network development?), and the political (what policies and government/operator strategies are emerging that could mitigate or amplify these limitations?)We will include the current national transmission, WWU and SGN distribution gas networks, mapping out locations for pipework on the GIS map alongside the data centre locations.3. What are the emerging Data Centre trends?With data centre power consumption predicted to triple between now and 2030, we will complete an energy demand assessment that will establish an accurate baseline for a range of datacentre scales and typologies. A range is required as the predictions for the change in data centre power consumption vary greatly depending on the size and use - there will be no one-size-fits-all approach.The total arriving workload and the external environmental factors are the two key inputs that determine the power demand of a data centre, with the IT equipment and cooling systems accounting for 80-90% of the total demand. With up to 80% of energy required by stand by processing units, the splitting of critical and non-critical loads as well as the modularisation of hyperscale data centres could help to load shift or even reduce the overall demand. We will assess the future projected energy demands across the range of potential data centre industry archetypes.We will review sectoral and site-specific data to investigate how data centre energy demands are projected to grow over the next 5/10/20 years. This will include a breakdown of the relevant growing technologies (such as AI, IoT, Blockchain and Cloud Computing) that are anticipated to have significant impacts on energy.We will also summarise how data centres can be co-located with relevant developments to help optimise energy, heat, and cooling requirements within and nearby data centres. This will include district heating connections, industrial process requirements, gas/hydrogen sources and sinks, and micro-clusters.4. What relevant energy technologies are on the horizon?The feasibility of blending hydrogen into the existing gas networks has been extensively explored in recent years, though the makeup and delivery of a blended network depends on several factors. We will investigate how the different forms of generated hydrogen can be applied depending on preferred scale, cost, and carbon impact, and summarise how this is projected to vary in the future for the data centre sector in particular.We will review the available technology that data centres will need to incorporate if they transition over to natural gas/blend/100% hydrogen. This will include natural gas and hydrogen fuels cells as well as hydrogen internal combustion engines.We will also provide an indication of how a proposed national hydrogen spine infrastructure can be exploited to optimise and co-locate future data centre hubs and their power requirements.Feasibility of using the gas networkUsing the output from the stakeholder engagement and baseline review, the feasibility of using the existing gas distribution network to meet the future needs and goals of the data centre sector will be assessed. This will include the ability to provide a reliable supply of energy and facilitating the sector to reach net zero. We will assess the readiness and capacity of the existing network to meet these needs. This will utilise the GIS map developed to evaluate the location of the existing network in relation to data centres. This will account for the additional demand placed on the gas network and identify where there is suitable pressure and capacity to meet the current and projected needs. We will show this as a separate layer on the GIS map, highlighting areas of the WWU and SGN network that can support the data centre sector. We will also summarise what gas network constraints could affect potential data centre connection.Case StudiesIn partnership with Vantage Data Centres and other willing participants, we will translate the above findings into a series of distinct case studies exploring the likely outcomes of converting a number of existing data centres to be powered via gas/blend or 100% hydrogen. These case studies will vary by scale, strategy, ambition, and feasibility, in order to ensure the full range of possible future data centre applications is considered - this might include the establishment of a new hydrogen electrolysis plant adjacent to a hyperscale data centre to allow off-grid generation, resupplying a multi-building data centre campus to a future blended distribution network and transferring waste-heat to nearby industrial users via existing pipework, or retrofitting existing gas peaking plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS) to provide co-located blue hydrogen to a university cluster. A minimum of three case studies (small, medium, large) will be delivered. We will look to complete 1 case study from both the WWU and SGN network areas to ensure that the energy demand andnetwork feasibility is assessed across a wider region, allowing for a more granular picture of the UK data centre sector as a whole. Each case study will indicate the likely capital/operational cost, carbon intensity, timescale (both in terms of retrofit requirements, and technology-maturity), and impacts to existing energy networks. We will also provide an indication of project performance via estimated PUE (power usage effectiveness), space utilisation, resilience, uptime, and equipment efficiency metrics, as well as a feasibility summary of each, highlighting the barriers and limitations that will need to be overcome, and an assessment of the feasibility of doing so.Final ReportOn completion of this work a final report will be delivered for WWU and SGN. We will also produce a final report and summary slide pack for public release, omitting any commercially sensitive information and data. All deliverables will demonstrate information in clear graphics and diagrams to enable the resources to be used easily and simply when engaging with stakeholders throughout the project development and will provide case study outputs in an accessible and interactive format.The internal report for WWU and SGN will provide technical background to the analysis carried out, citing relevant resources and assumptions to allow WWU and SGN to delve further into the information provided, at a later date should that be required.There is a lot of ongoing work to identify the most effective route to meet net zero in the UK and this project is one of many projects to evidence the major or minor role hydrogen will have in different scenarios. Repurposing the UK gas networks with hydrogen to support the challenge of the climate change act has the potential to savemillions with minimal gas customer disruption verses alternative decarbonisation solutions To understand the potential role the gas distribution network could play in meeting the future energy demands of data centres, both as a source of primary and backup power, by supplying natural gas, blend or 100% hydrogen. | |
| Abstract | To maintain continuous operation, data centres need a dependable, uninterrupted flow of electricity to power servers, supporting equipment and to provide cooling. At present this electricity is primarily sourced from the local electrical grid with data centre operators using diverse energy sources such as diesel generators to provide backup power. Several data centres are considering onsite power generation using natural gas or hydrogen in an effort to ensure electricity supply and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. | |
| Data | No related datasets |
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| Projects | No related projects |
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| Publications | No related publications |
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| Added to Database | 02/04/25 | |
