Building more data centres could push up electricity prices, expert warns

While the tech firms will pay their energy bills, connection costs and their network usage, Dr Wei Sun, from the University of Edinburgh, said it was unclear who would fund broader upgrades required on the transmission network.

He added: “It’s a concern of a lot of people worldwide.

“It’s a simple question of whether data centres are going to increase the bill or not. There’s no simple answer.

“Adding the data centre is probably going to trigger wider system upgrades.

“Does the data centre also pay for that? I think that’s really the question we need to answer.”

Matt Magill, from Neso, said modern data centres came with a degree of flexibility which allowed for supply and demand for electricity to be balanced on both sides.

Bigger AI operators who use, for example, large language modelling are building in enough internet bandwidth to shift the data handling to different parts of the world when needed.

Magill said: “Speaking to some of the large [companies] involved in this, they’re looking at some of the [AI] training on a regional basis or even a worldwide basis and can actually move the load around the world depending on what’s going on in those places.”

He said that offered flexibility to those that run the power service.