[wcoenen]

The 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.

[kristianc]

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.

[jillesvangurp]

Low latency is desirable for stock traders. Most of the data center growth isn't driven by that but by non latency critical workloads such as AI.

The reason, data centers choose to be near London is because there is no pricing advantage to go up north. Even though energy is plentiful, readily accessible, and often curtailed when there's too much of it there. If there was a pricing difference, you'd see a lot more economic activity up north.

Basically the physical advantage is there but the lack of economics cover it up and wipe out the advantage.

[flowerthoughts]

It seems fine that financial centers subsidise other regions. GP wasn't asking to ban building the data centers there, just make it more expensive. Because the delivery is more expensive.

[novok]

maybe time to move the city of london's data centers too? meta doesn't have a huge data center in their corporate offices either.

[afavour]

It could be that. Or it could just be that it’s logistically easier to keep your data centre close to your London office.

[chii]

which is why the price in electricity isn't truly being reflected properly by the cost of distribution.

If it costs less up north, then there would be incentive to move demand there (for data centers, which is more location agnostic). But if the price is the same up north, then the locality becomes a deciding factor.

[parineum]

Throw this in the bin of "fun consequences of price controls".

[baq]

OTOH a market without a regulator is literally a jungle

[pas]

a diverse productive ecosystem?

[vasco]

I have a much better proposal, we move the City of London (not London itself), to the North.

The bankers would learn about scotland and everyone else would be better off.

[jjgreen]

Please do this, please

[colechristensen]

the amount of DC space that is actually interested in those extremely low latencies is very small

[sysguest]

well is the demand about inference or training?

[kristianc]

The existing cluster of data centres in West London pre-dates the current AI boom, and the UK's "IT corridor" is generally based between London and Reading and Oxford and Cambridge. There's an emerging tech hub in the North West, but generally it's not there yet.

[6510]

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.

[pacifika]

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

[chickenbig]

> 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.

[andy_ppp]

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.

[citrin_ru]

1. North-south links in the UK are already fully utilised. There are more in works and plans but not sure it’s enough to meet even existing demand. 2. Transmission losses are substantial.

[amoshebb]

"About 1.7% of the electricity transferred over the transmission network is lost" https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmen...

[chickenbig]

Transmission in this sense does not include distribution losses (by the DNOs, at lower voltages). 8% in your link.

The UK government is now touting datacentre sites with better access to the national grid (transmission network) to avoid the issues inherent in the distribution networks. E.g. Culham which had a grid connection to power the JET fusion experiments.