• • • DATA CENTRE MANAGEMENT • • •
Data centres will be at the epicentre of a new AI ‘ramp up’
but there will be many challenges By Ben Pritchard, CEO, AVK-SEG
T
he UK government recently announced what it called its ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’ which recommended ways to grow the UK’s artificial intelligence sector, drive adoption of AI across the economy to boost growth and improve products and services. The government also revealed plans to set up a number of ‘AI Growth Zones’ with the aim of unlocking investment in AI-enabled data centres and support infrastructure by improving access to power and facilitating planning. This all sounds very promising but what do these announcements mean for the energy industry and how can data centre developers and operators optimise their power/energy solutions to facilitate the proliferation of high-density AI workloads? At first glance, the challenges seem immense, although not insurmountable. Before we get into the detail, we need to understand exactly what these government initiatives consist of.
‘Ramping up’ AI adoption The AI Opportunities Action Plan has been described by the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology as ‘a roadmap to capture the opportunities of AI to enhance growth and productivity and create tangible benefits for UK citizens.’ Put another way, the aim is to ‘ramp up’ AI adoption across the UK to boost economic growth, provide jobs for the future and improve people’s everyday lives. AI must be harnessed to enhance healthcare and education, improve how citizens interact with their government and increase the prevalence of AI in people’s working lives to open up new opportunities. Pointing out that the UK is the world’s third largest AI market, the government says the plan is based around three core goals; invest in the foundations of AI, position the UK as the best state partner to those building frontier AI and push hard on cross-economy AI adoption. The government says: ‘The public sector should rapidly pilot and scale AI products and services and encourage the private sector to do the same.’ The plan, then, is to build a secure and sustainable AI Infrastructure within the UK, which involves having access to sufficient computational power. This means data centres capable of housing the large and complex computers that are required for AI model training, inference and real-time inference. Tied in with this opportunities programme is the creation of AI Growth Zones (AIGZs) that are designed to facilitate the accelerated build-out of
10 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • APRIL 2025
AI data centres. For example, AIGZs could benefit from a streamlined planning process that is focused on delivering clean power. At the same time, the government is looking at other ways of boosting this build-out, including making AI data centres eligible for relief schemes that incentivise investment.
500MW AI infrastructure cluster by 2030
The UK government wants to build strategic partnerships with AI developers to work on shared AI and AI-enabled priorities. More specifically, the government is looking to work with data centre developers and energy solutions firms to establish at least a 500MW AI infrastructure cluster by 2030. Officials are particularly interested in strategic proposals that go beyond data centre developments to contribute to the UK’s broader AI ecosystem, including research, innovation, skills development and energy solutions. The government wants key players within the AI sector to:
• set out a clear pathway to 500MW+ capacity, including rough timelines and key development milestones
• identify what support is needed from government to unlock development
• indicate any partnership opportunities with local authorities and/or ways in which an AI Growth Zone proposal would support the UK’s wider AI ecosystem beyond providing greater computing power
At the same time, local authorities are going to be tasked with offering:
• sites with large existing power connections (100MW+)
• deindustrialised areas with land and infrastructure suitable for redevelopment
• locations near land suitable for hosting low carbon power generation and storage
• regions with an existing tech or industrial base that could benefit from AI infrastructure and support the formation of a wider innovation hub
electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk
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