The Economy Energy and Tourism Committee heard from a NESO official who said that there was 9.7GW of data centre demand in the grid queue in Scotland and 30 projects. This was a bit of a revelation, given that until now, the only measure of data centres in the pipeline in Scotland has been the 7.3GW that we have documented in our data centre map. An article in the National has taken some of our research about NESO and the grid queue and spoken to Dr Callum McIvor who also gave evidence at the Parliamentary Committee.
This was covered in The National Scotland’s hidden pipeline of ‘phantom’ AI data centres
Key Points
On Sunday 27th September The National revealed Scotland’s hidden pipeline of ‘phantom’ AI data centres’: this briefing will set out the implications of this finding for the Committees who are considering how to manage demand for hyperscale data centres.
The Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee heard on 15th September from a National Energy System Operator (NESO) official, who said that there was 9.7GW of data centre demand in the grid queue in Scotland, across 30 projects. APRS has previously calculated this future demand to be 7.3GW, based on applications in the planning pipeline, as shown on our data centre map. The National sought comment from NESO and from Dr Callum McIvor, who also gave evidence to the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee that day.
Key Points
- Despite its role as the UK’s central planning body for energy use and demand, NESO holds no public register of electricity demand projects, including hyperscale data centres, leaving Parliament and the public with no definitive measure of how much demand there is. This is despite the fact that generation and storage projects are required to be on a projects register, called the TEC Register, which is updated twice weekly.
- FoI requests from December show that NESO have not even kept an internal register, but said it was something they were considering.
- Ofgem estimates that that there is 73GW of contracted data centre demand. connections GB-wide, more than 1.5x as much as peak GB demand. This appears to come from a call for information they carried out.
- As above, the NESO official who gave evidence to the Economy, Energy and Tourism committee said that there was 9.7GW of planned demand from 30 data centres in Scotland: however, NESO told The National that the figure was 8.9GW for 28 projects, which is indicative of serious shortcomings.
- 8.9GW of demand would be more than twice the peak winter energy demand of the whole of Scotland.
- It is as yet unclear whether Scottish Ministers have acted in response to this lack of oversight by NESO: in our view, the processes Ministers have committed to at the debate on 16th September will be impossible to conduct effectively without clearer information from NESO and the UK Government about the grid queue for data centres and .
- Planning remains the only tool Scotland has to manage grid demand in a situation where NESO has allowed contracted demand to grow to huge levels above national supply. Ministers need to put in place their own strategic plan and analysis for data centres, as per the commitments given to Parliament on 16th September, and use the planning system to achieve it, because all policy control over the grid queue is reserved to Westminster and because we do not believe that NESO does not have the tools in place to manage this process in the best interests of Scotland.
Read the full Briefing
Why is data centre demand on the grid not being tracked as generation and storage demand are?
This is a briefing written originally for MSPs after a piece in the National regarding NESO and data centre demand in the grid queue. It explains that NESO does not have a public register of data centre demand in the grid queue, unlike for generation and storage, and, until at least December 2025, according to FoIs, they had no register at all of what data centre demand was in the grid queue. It is unclear how complete their picture of data centre demand is at present.
