alt Hacker NewsThe map of planned data centers shows how badly the UK needs to split its single pricing zone for electricity.
There should be more incentive to build data centers in the north, where there is plenty of renewable power but limited capacity to transport that power south.
Germany also has a single pricing zone and a similar north/south problem. It causes expensive curtailment and redispatch operations whenever the grid cannot physically transport the power from north to south the way it was traded.
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That plan was rejected later in July 2025, some energy firms say it could have scared off investment https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdr3e78112po
> There should be more incentive to build data centers in the north
There are clustering advantages for data centres. Lower inter-cluster latency being key. I do not think the UK market is large enough for two hubs, really.
Doesn’t the electricity move through the national grid fairly well? I don’t don’t disagree though, data centres in the north where there’s more space seems sensible.
Not sure how thing are today but I hear the weirdest story from a German farmer a decade or so ago: They make biogas then turn it into electricity and sell it to the grid for next to nothing. What they really wanted was to pump it into the gas net for domestic use but this wasn't allowed because it is of better quality than the "normal" Russian gas. Apparently someone really cares if some other customer got better gas for the same price(!?)
He was rather pissed off about it. That and some remark that they didn't produce enough gas for the entire country. He said, we are suppose to make enough gas for the entire country but do so without selling it. They did have an association with plans to make biogas from hemp at scale. It just cant happen.
edit: Apparently their law makers came to their senses since.
I'd imagine that a large part of the demand for data centres in the South is driven by the need for extreme low latency with the City of London and other financial centres like Frankfurt.
It's all well to say there should be more incentive to build data centres in the North, but physics is physics.