Communications of the ACM
Ireland's Datacenters Now Consume More Power than its Entire Rural Population
Dublin is one of the most popular locations in Ireland for the construction of new datacenters.
Credit: iStock
According to data from Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO), datacenters in the country now use more energy than all rural dwellings (12%), and are closing in on urban dwellings (21%).
The National Planning Framework, which the Irish government published in 2018, defines 'rural' as all areas outside towns with a population of less than 10,000 - although there are other definitions. The CSO itself classes rural areas as any settlement with a population of fewer than 1,500.
By any definition, Ireland has a large rural population: about 31.4% of the public live outside urban areas, according to the CSO in 2019, although other metrics put it at more than 36%. That's well above the EU average of 27.3%.
How are datacenters drawing enough power to eclipse the demands of more than 1.5 million people? It's a combination of both existing and new facilities being added to the grid, but the CSO claims that only a small number of Ireland's estimated 70 datacenters are responsible for the vast majority of power use.
From Computing (U.K.)
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