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To add a more local hurdle as well, the Dutch power grid is at capacity and its managing company is now telling companies that planned to build a datacenter tha

To add a more local hurdle as well, the Dutch power grid is at capacity and its managing company is now telling companies that planned to build a datacenter that they can't be connected to the grid until 2030, even though said companies already paid for and got guarantees about that connection. That is, memory capacity is reserved for datacenters yet to be built, but this will do weird things if said datacenter construction is postponed or cancelled altogether.

consp 6mo ago
That guarantee is not as much of a guarantee as stated in the media. You get a guarantee it will be planned at a certain time (as in looked at), not that it will be build. The cost of doing business is taking risks and mitigating them. There is a reason the nuclear plant in Borsele was build: an aluminium smelter. Maybe you should arrange for something similar as a datacenter (no politician will fall on a sword for that but you can try). The (original) power draw is about the same 80-100MW.
AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
> the Dutch power grid is at capacity and its managing company is now telling companies that planned to build a datacenter that they can't be connected to the grid until 2030, even though said companies already paid for and got guarantees about that connection. Are the Netherlands a large proportion of global datacenters?
- estimator7292 6mo ago
  Is that relevant? The grid in every country is getting ridiculously stressed by datacenters.
  - AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
    What the grid looks like in different countries is very different. The Dutch power grid is already almost 50% renewables, which is an inconvenience for adding capacity because that's around where you have to start really dealing with storage in order to add more. In most other places the percentage is significantly less than that and then you can easily add more of the cheap-but-intermittent stuff because a cloudy day only requires you to make up a 10% shortfall instead of a 50% one, which existing hydro or natural gas plants can handle without new storage when there are more of them to begin with.
    - adrianN 6mo ago
      I don’t think the source of the electricity is particularly relevant to whether or not you have the transport capacity to add tens of megawatts of demand to the grid. The problem is generally not the supply but whether your local transformers have capacity left.
      - AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
        When you're talking about something that draws megawatts existing transformers are pretty irrelevant because you're going to run high voltage lines directly to the site itself and install new dedicated transformers on site. What's more common is that they don't have the transmission capacity itself, but that one's pretty easy in this case too, because what that means is that you have an existing transmission line which is already near capacity with generation on one end and customers on the other. So then you just build the data center on the end of the transmission line where the generation is rather than the end where the existing customers are, at which point you can add new generation anywhere you want -- and if you put it near the existing customers you've just freed up transmission capacity because you now have new customers closer to the existing generation and new generation closer to the existing customers.
    - throwaway2037 6mo ago
      > The Dutch power grid is already almost 50% renewables I was a bit stunned when I read this. Your estimate is very close for 2025 here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Neth... I calculate about 43.5% was solar or wind. What is way crazier is the "bend in the curve" of production sources in the last 10 years. Look here at how fast solar and wind is growing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netherlands_electricity_generation_by_source.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netherlands_electricity_g...
  - nslsm 6mo ago
    >The grid in every country is getting ridiculously stressed by datacenters. In every country? Citation needed.
  - throwaway2037 6mo ago
    High-level, I would agree with you. One thing that blows me away: I think I read that Northern Virginia, USA has the highest data center density in the world. Mostly it is due to demand from US gov't, military, and spy agencies (like NSA). How did they do it? In mainstream media, I don't see any news about a stressed power grid in this area. I guess the US gov't carefully coordinated with local power providers to continuously upgrade their power grid? This is a real question. It makes no sense to me. No shilling/trolling here.
    - AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
      > I think I read that Northern Virginia, USA has the highest data center density in the world. Mostly it is due to demand from US gov't, military, and spy agencies (like NSA). That's where AWS us-east-1 is, i.e. the oldest AWS region where they got started to begin with. Google and Microsoft also have a large presence there. It's not just the US government, it's everybody, and it's not new. > How did they do it? Here's the US nuclear plant map, guess where a bunch of them are: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65104 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65104 The area around Virginia is also a major coal producer and when this was getting started it was a source of cheap electricity, but coal is quickly being replaced with natural gas via pipelines from the Gulf coast. Their current power mix is ~30% nuclear, ~12% renewables (solar) and almost all the rest natural gas.
    - neutronicus 6mo ago
      > I don't see any news about a stressed power grid in this area. That's because you don't live in Maryland. Our energy bills are through the roof and our transmission company is talking about rolling blackouts in 2027. https://www.thebanner.com/community/climate-environment/contested-transmission-line-NBPOSUMDNVEYTKYM2UBCZ2IWKU/ https://www.thebanner.com/community/climate-environment/cont...
      - throwaway2037 6mo ago
        Well, they have done pretty well for 20 years of planning. Google tells me that AWS us-east-1 region (Northern Virginia) was started in 2006! EDIT The opening paragraph: > State regulators’ review of the controversial power line proposed to stretch across three rural Maryland counties will extend to at least February 2027, officials announced Thursday, a timeline that prevents developers from meeting the grid operator’s deadline to ensure reliable electricity. I bet this is pure NIMBYism. Just this phrase alone is a dead giveaway: "controversial power line". LOL: What is controversial about a power line? Hint: They aren't, but NIMBYism exists.
- Dracophoenix 6mo ago
  Yes. Amsterdam has one of the largest IXPs (AMS-IX) in Europe and is also one of the largest European markets for Internet Infrastructure services (i.e. hosting, DNS provision, domain name registration, etc.)
  - trvz 6mo ago
    And all of these are practically irrelevant for AI data centers.
    - crote 6mo ago
      Do AI data centers not need internet connectivity anymore? The value of an IX isn't just in the IX itself, but also in the presence of hundreds of parties for direct peering, and excellent connectivity to the rest of the world. It makes a lot of sense to build your DC near one - even if you have no intention of actually participating in the IX itself.
      - PunchyHamster 6mo ago
        > Do AI data centers not need internet connectivity anymore? They don't need entire IX worth of connectivity. You're sending mostly text back and forth and any media is in far lower volume than even normal far less dense DC would generate, all the major traffic is inside the AI DC. All it needs is fiber to nearest IX
- toast0 6mo ago
  Amsterdam hosts a major internet exchange. It's not a bad place to build a datacenter and there are many. Northern latitude brings free air cooling, but also additional distance to clients. Lots of peers in AMS-IX, but not a lot of oceananic cable landings (one with two paths to the US, but most of the submarine cables land nearby in Europe)
  - AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
    Whether it's generally a reasonable place to build them isn't the percentage. The number seems to be ~3%.
    - AlecSchueler 6mo ago
      3% of the global total does seem surprisingly significant.
      - matt-p 6mo ago
        London is about 3X bigger than Amsterdam in terms of capacity. If you look at the core western europe market (so called FLAP-D) which I am rather familiar with London holds 35% of that market and Amsterdam about 12%. I'm not at all sold that the old rule of thumb that this market is about 25% of global capacity has been true since about 2023 because of the AI buildout in NA/ME.
drnick1 6mo ago
This just highlights what an utter failure and self-inflicted wound the green policies of Euro countries have been. Europe has already lost the AI race to the U.S. and China.
- kilpikaarna 6mo ago
  The only way to lose even harder would be to build a shitload of datacenters for them
- Epa095 6mo ago
  Renewables is the only realistic path to energy independence. Today's global situation should show the absolute necessity of that, even if you dont give a sh*t about the environment. Had we done more 10 years ago we would have been better of. The second best time to start is now.
  - paganel 6mo ago
    Europe still has coal, lots of it, not using it is a political choice and a self-inflicted wound.
    - mazurnification 6mo ago
      It does not. That is not economically mined. Last big hard coal producer in EU - Poland, has extraction cost x2 or x3 of the mountain top removal mining in US. This sector is shrinking rapidly. Poland coal production came back to ~1915 levels (taking into account current PL territory). This sector would be closed already if not for massive subsidies.
    - energy123 6mo ago
      Last year, China's coal use decreased, while China installed 300x more renewables than nuclear. Coal and nuclear aren't cost competitive with renewables, either in a free market or a technocratic top-down economy. Coal and gas still maintain a valid niche of firming intermittency. But that niche is temporary and shrinking.
jaeyson 6mo ago
That year 2030, man I'm feeling weird on that timeline in general...
- throwaway2037 6mo ago
  I know that you comment is midly off topic, but I am going through the same out of body experience each time I see a major project announces an opening date of 2030 or later.
broeng 6mo ago
I think Denmark is in the same situation, and recently gave a timeline of 10 years for new projects to get connected to the grid.
throwaway2037 6mo ago
I'm not disagreeing with your post, but I did a quick check here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Neth... It says that in 2025, Netherlands was a net exporter of electricity (~14,000 GWh). My guess: Where they want to build data centers, the grid cannot handle it, but the overall system has more than enough power to build data centers. Do you think that sounds like a resonable guess?

consp 6mo ago

That guarantee is not as much of a guarantee as stated in the media. You get a guarantee it will be planned at a certain time (as in looked at), not that it will be build. The cost of doing business is taking risks and mitigating them. There is a reason the nuclear plant in Borsele was build: an aluminium smelter. Maybe you should arrange for something similar as a datacenter (no politician will fall on a sword for that but you can try). The (original) power draw is about the same 80-100MW.

AnthonyMouse 6mo ago

> the Dutch power grid is at capacity and its managing company is now telling companies that planned to build a datacenter that they can't be connected to the grid until 2030, even though said companies already paid for and got guarantees about that connection. Are the Netherlands a large proportion of global datacenters?

estimator7292 6mo ago
Is that relevant? The grid in every country is getting ridiculously stressed by datacenters.
- AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
  What the grid looks like in different countries is very different. The Dutch power grid is already almost 50% renewables, which is an inconvenience for adding capacity because that's around where you have to start really dealing with storage in order to add more. In most other places the percentage is significantly less than that and then you can easily add more of the cheap-but-intermittent stuff because a cloudy day only requires you to make up a 10% shortfall instead of a 50% one, which existing hydro or natural gas plants can handle without new storage when there are more of them to begin with.
  - adrianN 6mo ago
    I don’t think the source of the electricity is particularly relevant to whether or not you have the transport capacity to add tens of megawatts of demand to the grid. The problem is generally not the supply but whether your local transformers have capacity left.
    - AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
      When you're talking about something that draws megawatts existing transformers are pretty irrelevant because you're going to run high voltage lines directly to the site itself and install new dedicated transformers on site. What's more common is that they don't have the transmission capacity itself, but that one's pretty easy in this case too, because what that means is that you have an existing transmission line which is already near capacity with generation on one end and customers on the other. So then you just build the data center on the end of the transmission line where the generation is rather than the end where the existing customers are, at which point you can add new generation anywhere you want -- and if you put it near the existing customers you've just freed up transmission capacity because you now have new customers closer to the existing generation and new generation closer to the existing customers.
  - throwaway2037 6mo ago
    > The Dutch power grid is already almost 50% renewables I was a bit stunned when I read this. Your estimate is very close for 2025 here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Neth... I calculate about 43.5% was solar or wind. What is way crazier is the "bend in the curve" of production sources in the last 10 years. Look here at how fast solar and wind is growing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netherlands_electricity_generation_by_source.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Netherlands_electricity_g...
- nslsm 6mo ago
  >The grid in every country is getting ridiculously stressed by datacenters. In every country? Citation needed.
- throwaway2037 6mo ago
  High-level, I would agree with you. One thing that blows me away: I think I read that Northern Virginia, USA has the highest data center density in the world. Mostly it is due to demand from US gov't, military, and spy agencies (like NSA). How did they do it? In mainstream media, I don't see any news about a stressed power grid in this area. I guess the US gov't carefully coordinated with local power providers to continuously upgrade their power grid? This is a real question. It makes no sense to me. No shilling/trolling here.
  - AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
    > I think I read that Northern Virginia, USA has the highest data center density in the world. Mostly it is due to demand from US gov't, military, and spy agencies (like NSA). That's where AWS us-east-1 is, i.e. the oldest AWS region where they got started to begin with. Google and Microsoft also have a large presence there. It's not just the US government, it's everybody, and it's not new. > How did they do it? Here's the US nuclear plant map, guess where a bunch of them are: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65104 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65104 The area around Virginia is also a major coal producer and when this was getting started it was a source of cheap electricity, but coal is quickly being replaced with natural gas via pipelines from the Gulf coast. Their current power mix is ~30% nuclear, ~12% renewables (solar) and almost all the rest natural gas.
  - neutronicus 6mo ago
    > I don't see any news about a stressed power grid in this area. That's because you don't live in Maryland. Our energy bills are through the roof and our transmission company is talking about rolling blackouts in 2027. https://www.thebanner.com/community/climate-environment/contested-transmission-line-NBPOSUMDNVEYTKYM2UBCZ2IWKU/ https://www.thebanner.com/community/climate-environment/cont...
    - throwaway2037 6mo ago
      Well, they have done pretty well for 20 years of planning. Google tells me that AWS us-east-1 region (Northern Virginia) was started in 2006! EDIT The opening paragraph: > State regulators’ review of the controversial power line proposed to stretch across three rural Maryland counties will extend to at least February 2027, officials announced Thursday, a timeline that prevents developers from meeting the grid operator’s deadline to ensure reliable electricity. I bet this is pure NIMBYism. Just this phrase alone is a dead giveaway: "controversial power line". LOL: What is controversial about a power line? Hint: They aren't, but NIMBYism exists.
Dracophoenix 6mo ago
Yes. Amsterdam has one of the largest IXPs (AMS-IX) in Europe and is also one of the largest European markets for Internet Infrastructure services (i.e. hosting, DNS provision, domain name registration, etc.)
- trvz 6mo ago
  And all of these are practically irrelevant for AI data centers.
  - crote 6mo ago
    Do AI data centers not need internet connectivity anymore? The value of an IX isn't just in the IX itself, but also in the presence of hundreds of parties for direct peering, and excellent connectivity to the rest of the world. It makes a lot of sense to build your DC near one - even if you have no intention of actually participating in the IX itself.
    - PunchyHamster 6mo ago
      > Do AI data centers not need internet connectivity anymore? They don't need entire IX worth of connectivity. You're sending mostly text back and forth and any media is in far lower volume than even normal far less dense DC would generate, all the major traffic is inside the AI DC. All it needs is fiber to nearest IX
toast0 6mo ago
Amsterdam hosts a major internet exchange. It's not a bad place to build a datacenter and there are many. Northern latitude brings free air cooling, but also additional distance to clients. Lots of peers in AMS-IX, but not a lot of oceananic cable landings (one with two paths to the US, but most of the submarine cables land nearby in Europe)
- AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
  Whether it's generally a reasonable place to build them isn't the percentage. The number seems to be ~3%.
  - AlecSchueler 6mo ago
    3% of the global total does seem surprisingly significant.
    - matt-p 6mo ago
      London is about 3X bigger than Amsterdam in terms of capacity. If you look at the core western europe market (so called FLAP-D) which I am rather familiar with London holds 35% of that market and Amsterdam about 12%. I'm not at all sold that the old rule of thumb that this market is about 25% of global capacity has been true since about 2023 because of the AI buildout in NA/ME.

drnick1 6mo ago

This just highlights what an utter failure and self-inflicted wound the green policies of Euro countries have been. Europe has already lost the AI race to the U.S. and China.

kilpikaarna 6mo ago
The only way to lose even harder would be to build a shitload of datacenters for them
Epa095 6mo ago
Renewables is the only realistic path to energy independence. Today's global situation should show the absolute necessity of that, even if you dont give a sh*t about the environment. Had we done more 10 years ago we would have been better of. The second best time to start is now.
- paganel 6mo ago
  Europe still has coal, lots of it, not using it is a political choice and a self-inflicted wound.
  - mazurnification 6mo ago
    It does not. That is not economically mined. Last big hard coal producer in EU - Poland, has extraction cost x2 or x3 of the mountain top removal mining in US. This sector is shrinking rapidly. Poland coal production came back to ~1915 levels (taking into account current PL territory). This sector would be closed already if not for massive subsidies.
  - energy123 6mo ago
    Last year, China's coal use decreased, while China installed 300x more renewables than nuclear. Coal and nuclear aren't cost competitive with renewables, either in a free market or a technocratic top-down economy. Coal and gas still maintain a valid niche of firming intermittency. But that niche is temporary and shrinking.

jaeyson 6mo ago

That year 2030, man I'm feeling weird on that timeline in general...

throwaway2037 6mo ago
I know that you comment is midly off topic, but I am going through the same out of body experience each time I see a major project announces an opening date of 2030 or later.

broeng 6mo ago

I think Denmark is in the same situation, and recently gave a timeline of 10 years for new projects to get connected to the grid.

throwaway2037 6mo ago

I'm not disagreeing with your post, but I did a quick check here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Neth... It says that in 2025, Netherlands was a net exporter of electricity (~14,000 GWh). My guess: Where they want to build data centers, the grid cannot handle it, but the overall system has more than enough power to build data centers. Do you think that sounds like a resonable guess?