DATA CENTRES
From passive loads to active grid assets: Ireland’s data centres face the MPID345 challenge By Lee Todd, VP Energy & Carbon Services, ABB Electrifi cation Service
I
reland’s data centre industry has grown into critical national infrastructure in little more than a decade.
Data centres now consume close to a quarter of the country’s electricity, expected to approach 30 per cent by 2032, a demand which underpins Ireland’s role as a global digital hub. At the same time, it is driving a key change: the national grid is no longer willing to accept data centres as passive loads. EirGrid’s proposed grid code modifi cation MPID345 is the clearest signal of this shift as it defi nes how facilities with large power demands, especially data centres, must behave during grid disturbances. Instead of dropping offl ine, they will be required to remain connected during faults, restore at least 90 per cent of pre-fault demand within 500 milliseconds of voltage recovery, and withstand frequency changes of up to ±1 Hz per second. For operators whose electrical systems were designed primarily to protect IT loads from grid events, this marks a fundamental change in what ‘good behaviour’ looks like. Traditional data center architectures are built around isolation. Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), diesel generators, and protection schemes are engineered to shield servers from voltage dips and frequency swings by disconnecting or transferring the load when the grid becomes unstable.
While this approach preserves computing uptime, it creates problems for the power system. When large loads shed simultaneously during a disturbance, hundreds of megawatts of demand can vanish in an instant, driving frequency and voltage excursions that ripple across the entire grid and increase the risk of system-wide instability. Simply adding more backup capacity is not
enough. Batteries or larger generators may keep the data centre running, but they don’t turn the facility into an asset that can actively support the grid in those critical fi rst few hundred milliseconds. MPID345 effectively turns grid compliance into a fast, coordinated power orchestration problem. Operators need infrastructure that can sense disturbances and inject or absorb power in a controlled way, at grid scale, without tearing out and redesigning their existing electrical systems. ABB’s latest work in Ireland, detailed in our whitepaper Ireland’s Data Centres, outlines an alternative approach: a compact, modular behind- the-meter platform that integrates ultracapacitor energy storage with grid-forming power conversion and advanced digital control. Ultracapacitors provide extremely high-power density and ultra-fast
34 September/October 2026 Irish Manufacturing
www.irish-manufacturing.com
response, making them well suited to sub-second interventions. Paired with medium-voltage converters and intelligent controls, they can deliver synthetic inertia, fast frequency response and voltage support in the milliseconds immediately following a fault. In a representative 50 MW data center, ABB’s concept uses multiple modular power blocks to provide more than 40 MVA of dynamic support capability, layered on top of the existing architecture rather than replacing it.
This shifts the role of the data centre from isolated load to active grid participant. During a disturbance, the platform can keep the facility connected, help stabilise local voltage and frequency and coordinate seamlessly with existing UPS and generation assets to ensure compliance and continuity of IT operations. By using ultracapacitors instead of multiple overlapping technologies, the solution is designed to deliver all the required services with lower capital and operating costs,
while remaining scalable as demand grows. For Irish data center operators and other large
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manufacturing and industrial loads, the immediate driver is regulatory compliance. But the strategic implications are broader. Facilities equipped with fast, controllable power platforms are better positioned to participate in future fl exibility and ancillary services markets, turning grid support into a source of revenue rather than a pure cost of doing business. They also gain resilience, because an architecture designed to ride through disturbances and interact constructively with the grid is inherently more robust than one built simply to disconnect and protect. Ireland’s data centres are a preview of how
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large energy users everywhere will be expected to behave. In the next phase of the energy transition, being a good grid citizen means responding in milliseconds and acting as an active grid asset, not just a very large load.
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