Guest blog: Data Centres: The winter outlook for the GB electricity market 2023/24 and its implications on operators
Ahead of the winter, UK developer and operator of high performance data centres, Kao Data, has published a new whitepaper to help data centre operators and end-users understand the current climate in the British energy market and to provide an outlook for the energy situation across the winter period.
As data centres and their customers rely on reliable power it is essential to reassure all businesses of the stability of the national electricity infrastructure and the contingency measures in place to keep British business dependent on data centre infrastructure, powered and connected.
Last year the UK media focused on power availability and pricing in the UK, which was exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Much of the reporting on the energy situation was negative, predicting national blackouts and doomsday scenarios during January and February. Yet in hindsight, what’s clear is that none of the emergency actions set in place by National Grid Electricity System Operator (NGESO) and energy providers were required – the UK energy situation was well managed and industry demand was met.
Written by industry energy expert, Wayne Mitchell, the new paper details:
- The actions that were taken last year to manage power demand and supply
- The levels of remedial action that can take place in the event of energy shortages
- The current energy mix in the UK
- The outlook for winter 2023/24 and the implications for data centres
- NGESO’s official Winter Outlook for 2023-2024
- How various geo-political issues are impacting energy prices and availability.
As the paper concludes, generally, the outlook for this winter is good, and in fact even better than last winter. Electricity prices have come down considerably since this time last year, over £350/MWh then, versus £110/MWh today, as we have adapted to the reduced gas supply from Russia and are now importing Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from further afield. Other factors as detailed in the paper indicate an improved situation with resilient back-up options if and as needed.
You can download the whitepaper from Kao Data’s resources section: https://kaodata.com/resources/case-studies-data-sheets-whitepapers
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