Government: Power consumption of data centers likely to double by 2037

The German government expects an enormous increase in energy demand in the coming years due to developments and applications in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). This will be visible in data centers, writes the German government in a recently published answer to a question from the CDU/CSU parliamentary group on digital technologies. The electricity consumption of data centers in Germany is currently around 20 TWh per year. By 2037, this figure is likely to almost double to around 38 TWh, according to the Federal Ministry of Economics, which is in charge of the inquiry. It is referring to the current draft of the electricity scenario framework, which is based on a market survey of the transmission system operators.

According to the response, the major grid operators estimate that data centers will consume as much as 88 TWh of electricity in 2045. However, these figures have yet to be confirmed by the Federal Network Agency. The authors of the Borderstep Institute's studies for the industry association Bitkom also assumed that German data centers would require between 25 and 35 TWh of electricity per year by 2030. According to the latest Borderstep figures, consumption has risen from 11 TWh ten years ago to 18 TWh now. At the same time, however, the efficiency of local systems has also increased six-fold, as performance has been significantly increased thanks to more modern hardware and software.

Stromnetz Berlin: From greyhound to repair

In order to secure the energy supply for data centers, potential locations should be considered as early as possible in the power grid planning process, the government emphasizes. It therefore welcomes the market consultation process as part of grid development planning. The resulting grid expansion will be placed on a legal basis with the Federal Requirements Plan. In general, the expected increase in energy demand over the next few years due to AI developments and applications is subject to considerable uncertainty. However, it can generally be assumed "that advancing digitalization will lead to an increase in electricity consumption".

Due to the steep increase in demand, Stromnetz Berlin, as the capital's distribution system operator, no longer wants to serve customers on a first-come, first-served basis, whereby applications are processed in the order in which they are received. The background to this is that even the planned doubling of electricity capacity to 4 gigawatts (GW) by 2035 would not be sufficient to supply the data centers planned in Berlin. In total, the connection requests currently add up to 2.8 GW. In future, the capacity that can be distributed with the planned grid expansion is to be divided among all applicants according to their realistic requirements ("repartitioning"). The allocation procedure for the next ten years will start in April 2025.

(vbr)