[lclarkmichalek]

The impact on the energy market always seems a tad misstated in these articles. Datacenters are often funded through corporate power purchase agreements, committing them to purchasing power directly from the generator over periods of multiple years. Those CPPAs are often tied to the development of new renewable energy generation (ex: https://www.matheson.com/insights/detail/matheson-advises-br...). Now, that still puts pressure on the grid for transmission, raises the marginal cost of renewable energy, and in cases where the generator cannot meet demand, presumably increases demand on other generation sources. But it makes the “40% of energy being used by DCs” stat seem a little misleading - a reasonable amount of generation exists because of these DCs.

(I work for Meta, who’s Clonee datacenter is mentioned in this article)

[piltdownman]

EirGrid previously claimed it would be able to allocate 1,800MW of electricity to new data centers, but had been receiving additional requests of up to 2,000MW. They also projected that demand from data centers could account for 27% of all electricity demand in the country by 2029, up from 11% in 2020.

https://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files/library/EirGrid/All-...

Absolute peak energy demand in Ireland is about 5,500MW. 70% of Ireland’s electricity will come from renewable sources by 2030, without taking into account the footprint of these data centres - so there's a few different perspectives on this one.