• • • INTERVIEW • • •
everything you do, you really couldn’t be without them. I was talking to a friend in the industry, and he was saying that his children would rather lose household electricity than lose their phone connection. You can see the anxiety on people’s faces when they haven’t got a signal or when their phone dies, this is what our lives have become, reliant. So I think there’s a lot of education that’s required for people to understand the importance of data centres.
I get in a black cab every night when I come home from the station and the cabby asks, ‘what do you do?’ ‘Oh, I’m working in the data centre industry, do you know what that is?’ ‘I ain’t got a clue, mate.’ ‘Well, it runs your life.’ It’s become a bit of a joke in the industry, but it’s true.
If you look ahead 10 to 15 years, what do you think the data centre of the future will look like in terms of design, energy use and integration with the environment?
10 to 15 years? That sounds a long way away, doesn’t it? I feel that what we’re seeing now from a microgrid perspective is going to grow. The investment in national infrastructure and the time it takes will change. You’ve only got to look at Hinckley (a major new nuclear power station under construction by EDF) and all the others that are being built now, those power stations are not going to be online for at least another 10 years years, and even then, you will have the power, but the distribution to where it needs to be is still an ageing infrastructure that hasn’t been invested in. The cost to do that is going to be phenomenal to get it to where it needs to be.
I think that there will be a lot more microgrids that are being built. And I think from an environmental point of view, people need to review the legislation, I think the industry needs to move on. Yes, it’s great to be great to the environment, but there is a limit. Otherwise, you’re going to stop the flow of development and expansion of the data centre industry.
“
We need data centres, they’re not really a luxury item anymore.
And the other thing is, I’ve been in this industry a long time and I’ve seen the technology cycle go round and round and round, and we’re on about our third iteration now of big central computers and distributed computers, etc. And we’re now in this AI liquid environment where the chip sets are so powerful. But it’s going to get to a point where they become too big to operate in one rack. So I think, again, you’ll go from this big central, where they’ll get the same technology and they’ll distribute it into smaller ones. I think that’s what you’ll see. It’s happened like 2 or 3 times in my lifetime.
I think it’s exciting. I do have concerns though that if people don’t get on board with what’s happening from a microgrid point of view, we’re going to stifle what’s happening in the UK and Europe. People need to wake up to the fact that we’ve got to do this.
10 or 15 years, that’s a long time in the data centre industry.
https://puredc.com
https://www.avk-seg.com
electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • MARCH 2026 27
“
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
