[astaunton]

I live in Ireland and I can agree with some of the information / points the article raises. There has been a large increase in the number of data-centres in Ireland over a short period of time, and the electric supply has not expanded as quickly (in fact there has been issues in the recent past where there were several generators shut down for maintenance and there was a risk to supply, nothing to do with requirement from data-centres)....therefore there is an issue with supply vs demand.

The article states that there has been a massive increase in the demands for electricity from data-centres in the last 6 years, but fails to identify the growth in IT as a whole with that period. Another fact that also seems to be missed (intentionally or not) is that due to restrictions over the last 2 years, as a consequence of COVID, the majority of businesses in Ireland were forced to move to a "working from home" methodology instead of having everyone in the office (the offices are only now beginning to transition back to having people in the office space). As a result all these companies suddenly had a requirement for Zoom / Microsoft Teams etc to facilitate workers being remote but to also function as close as possible to "business as usual". These demands meant that in the last 2 years alone there has been a massive requirement for additional data-centres and IT infrastructure. In my mind there has been issues with supply for a prolonged period, with parts of the delivery infrastructure not being fit for purpose / requiring upgrade, these issues have just been exacerbated by the rapid incline of TECH in Ireland over a short period.