Dale Johnston opens the gate to his neat suburban garden on the western fringes of Newport in South Wales. There’s a trampoline and a slide on the lawn for his grandchildren, and chairs for him and his wife. He should be enjoying the light draining from the perfect autumnal sky – but almost his entire view is blotted out by a vast expanse of prefabricated panels.
The 23 metre-high grey hulk looming over him and his neighbours is a hyperscale datacentre. It is heralded by the area’s Labour politicians as a job creator, yet all Johnston can think about is what he has lost: “Before, the sun used to come around here and it was lovely.” The way residents have been treated is “disgusting”. Johnston, who used to work for a chemical company in the city, worries what their lives will be like when the centre is switched on: the 36 sets of air blast coolers, needed to stop the chips inside overheating, most likely generate a constant drone, while regular testing of 60 back-up diesel generators, to prevent costly interruption to the flow of data, could produce harmful fumes.
He already has to keep his bathroom window closed to stop the low hum from another facility on the rapidly expanding 46-acre datacentre campus that borders the small enclave of 27 houses. His wife, a nurse who works night shifts, can barely sleep already. He shakes his head in despair: “We just don’t know what’s going to happen.” Johnston can talk about little else, but he feels no one in authority is listening.
He’s invited councillors and MPs backing the development to visit his garden. But “they won’t come around here to see what they’ve done”. This is the frontline of Britain’s datacentre boom, which is pitting residents against giant US tech firms seeking to build a network of facilities capable of providing the immense computing muscle for powerful AI models.
There are 315 hyperscale datacentres waiting to connect to the national grid, which carries electricity from power plants to homes and businesses (hyperscale typically means facilities with at least 5,000 servers and 10,000 sq ft in size). Combined, these new centres will require 73GW of power, 28GW higher than the typical peak energy demand of 45GW on a cold winter’s day. Wales is one of the main development hotspots outside London.
It already has the largest datacentre capacity beyond the capital, with new hyperscale facilities planned for former industrial and urban sites. The Keir Starmer-led Labour government viewed this as an inevitable revolution, which the country must embrace or be left behind. It established five AI growth zones to push more datacentres through the planning system and speed up connections to the national grid.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
