With the energy price cap going up today and news that bills will be rising for households this winter, we calculated that the AI Growth zone electricity subsidies mean that the current site plus extension would get subsidies of £6.7 million a year when complete, and the whole AI growth zone which is planned to be 500MW, when constructed, would get a subsidy of over £80 million a year.
In November the UK Government has announced a subsidy of £24 per MWh for electricity costs for Scottish AI Growth Zones. The existing site at Data Vita, once the extension is completed, will be 40MW and we estimate will receive £6.7 million a year in subsidies Once the whole AI growth zone is complete (500MW) we estimate it will receive over £80 million a year in subsidies to its energy costs
Kat Jones said:
“People living near the AI Growth zone, will find news that their energy bills are going to go up this winter when they are already struggling to heat their homes pretty difficult to swallow. Especially when the electricity subsidies to the AI Growth zone are worth millions of pounds a year. There is no reason that the UK Government should be subsiding hyperscale AI data centres, they use inconceivably large amounts of energy, employ extremely few people, and take up vast amounts of land. This is a subsidy for climate breakdown.”
Background and Calculations:
The extension to the current datavita site in Chapelhall (DV1) will take the site to 40MW and a further extension to the site (DV3), which is also under construction does not have a power in the public domain. Their press release last week that they would ‘expand and build two data centres in the North Lanarkshire AI Growth Zone’. It also said that “The investment will expand DataVita’s existing DV1 data centre and fund the construction of a new data centre, DV3 . The capacity of both is contracted to AI cloud firm CoreWeave, the infrastructure provider to many of the world’s leading AI labs, under a 15-year lease agreement.”
Note from APRS: both DV1 extension and the DV3 site are both well advanced in the construction stage More info
If we assume an 80% load factor for the data centre (NESO figures) then the site will use 40 x0.8 x 365 x 24 = 350,400 MWh of energy a year. With a discount for AI Growth zone data centres in Scotland of £24 per MWh (UK Government) this makes a subsidy of £6.7 million pounds a year in electricity costs for the existing site plus extension. And for the whole AI Growth zone, which will be 500MW, the subsidy will be £84 million per year.