From Amsterdam to London: The hot topic is data centre growth

Our Head of Major Project Sales, Ash Macdougal has returned from a busy week attending two data centre conferences across two time zones in two days. Kickstart Europe was the first, held on Wednesday 4th February at Amsterdam’s RAI Conference Centre, and the second, the TechEx Global Expo at Olympia London on Thursday 5th February.

The two events gave an opportunity to link up with new and existing contacts from across the industry and to understand the latest market dynamics form industry leaders.

Key takeaways:

• Europe should be ready to go it alone, as the new era of an isolationist America, under Trump 2.0, sees the U.S. turning it’s back on it’s old ally. This was the view of Dutch American Lawyer Michiel Vos during a rip-roaring, expletive filled, keynote address, aimed at industry execs as a call to action.
• Despite the geopolitical shifts, Europe is expected to see 14% growth, with 10GW of self-build in operation by end 2026 and a further 6GW to be added by the end of 2028.
• AI uptake continues to drive demand, with businesses looking to see productivity and labour force gains through investment in process automation and resource augmentation.
• Grid constraints in Tier 1 markets are driving a move of digital infrastructure into new (Tier 2) geographies, where clean power infrastructure is available and latency is less a concern.
• De-centralised edge computing is set for continued growth when it comes to addressing latency, where it is a concern.
• Some creative thinking and ‘go-arounds’ could provide solutions with power constraints, including; proactive load management, reduction in load power consumption through innovation, especially around heat output and cooling of CPUs and the use of existing and ‘brownfield’ construction sites, with grid capacity already in place could be the low hanging fruit the industry is in much need of!

Interesting industry conflicts still seem to be at play, especially around fast and dirty power (gas and diesel engines) versus clean renewable power. As the industry looks to clean up its act, manufacturers and suppliers of fossil fuel burning, off-grid generators report exponential sales growth.

Regardless of how power is sourced the consensus is that digital infrastructure needs to be built and much faster than it currently is. And regardless of the method of power delivery, there will always be a need for the power distribution infrastructure, including substations, switchgear, transformers, protection and control systems that are at the core of Ipsum Group’s engineering services.

Reach out to us if you’d like to know more on how we can help you.