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Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

theregister.com

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Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#61

Post by [deleted] »

naturalmovement wrote: post #53
infinite_spin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dump #datacenters - they are not critical Internet infrastructure! what is the alternative? I don't think self hosting is a robust/defensible option for a majority of internet services

Maybe we ought to take away society's Spotify etc. and go back to trading cassettes. I predict it will last all of two days. You see the mentally ill chaos unfold within hours when DNS or a CDN goes down. Imagine taking their datacenter-dependent toys away for more than a day. How will they navigate job interviews (in between datacenter protests) without relying on ChatGPT to feed them answers? Sounds like a circular…

[deleted]

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#62

Post by mrb »

Ah the old "country's worth of electricity" comparison... Keep in mind that Ireland's entire electricity needs could be covered by a one nuclear power plant (3.8 GW with 4 reactors). IOW, you could offload all Irish datacenters by connecting them to a single nuclear power reactor (~900 MW), a small building that has a footprint of under 50 x 50 meters for the reactor, and another of 100 x 50 meters for the generator.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#64

Post by perching_aix »

This article could have been a stacked bar chart with a caption. Maybe even should have been. Matter of fact, here you go people: https://imgur.com/a/s9KZRuQ (yearly version with 2015 as the anchor: https://imgur.com/a/f9ypK4W) -- there's also another likely more illuminating chart below, focusing on the YoY differentials.

Would have appreciated a bit more context too. This sounds very serious, but how does it compare in energy use per land area across countries? Or in absolute use? Maybe Ireland is just small? Maybe not very densely populated? Maybe efficient in its energy use otherwise? Maybe all of these?

I also find the tone interesting. It's as if there was a threshold being approached [0], or if the rate was accelerating. But it's kinda the opposite?

> Their share rose to 23 percent in 2025 after passing 20 percent in 2023 and 14 percent in 2021

So from 2021 to 2023 (+2 yrs) the jump was 6pp, and from 2023 to 2025 (also +2 yrs) was 3pp... meaning the expansion rate in usage share has slowed to a half? I could easily imagine a similar article celebrating. Once again though, visual: https://imgur.com/a/0eR3bl6 -- using the actual raw data instead. Basically what the article should have been. You can see the amount of change attributable to DCs being higher than 2025 from 2020 through 2023. 2024 was a significant drop, and 2025 is between the two.

And what's with the random timeskips for the absolute data? Here's 2015, 2019, 2024, 2025, but not 2023 (only %), not 2022, not 2021 (only %), etc. So annoying. If we're throwing numbers around, then let's do it properly gents. The data is all available ^^ [1]. No need for untraceable quotes from a spokesperson; literally just a few clicks and a handful of agent prompts.

[0] Not only is there of course no threshold to speak of, the entire narrative framing is up in the air. Why does it matter how much electricity DCs use (in absolute or relative terms), and who does it matter to? Ireland's electricity use energy mix was recorded to be a suspiciously tight majority "green" in 2024 at least: https://www.iea.org/countries/ireland/electricity - could use all the energy they wanted if it was green energy, no?

[1] https://data.cso.ie/

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#65

Post by egypturnash »

thegrim33 wrote: post #2

They chose to add the word "guzzle". They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". But they made the editorial decision to add in "guzzle". What's the word for this type of propaganda, where they add in some sort of adjective that wasn't needed, in order to prime the reader on how to think/feel, rather than just objectively reporting the facts? What are the odds that the c…

I see you've never read The Register before. Their whole value proposition is "here is computing news from cynical, snarky viewpoint". Their motto "Biting the hand that feeds IT" has vanished from the masthead but it's still in their footer.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#66

Post by kazinator »

thegrim33 wrote: post #2

They chose to add the word "guzzle". They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". But they made the editorial decision to add in "guzzle". What's the word for this type of propaganda, where they add in some sort of adjective that wasn't needed, in order to prime the reader on how to think/feel, rather than just objectively reporting the facts? What are the odds that the c…

> They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity".

That's objectively described by "guzzle".

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#67

Post by testing22321 »

mrb wrote: post #62

Ah the old "country's worth of electricity" comparison... Keep in mind that Ireland's entire electricity needs could be covered by a one nuclear power plant (3.8 GW with 4 reactors). IOW, you could offload all Irish datacenters by connecting them to a single nuclear power reactor (~900 MW), a small building that has a footprint of under 50 x 50 meters for the reactor, and another of 100 x 50 meters for the generator.

Sweet. Start building TODAY and it will be done in nothing less than 20 years for nothing less than $20 BILLION.

What should they do in the meantime?

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#68

Post by cbmuser »

Ireland consumes roughly 40 TWh per year, that’s less than the production of four EPR reactors or two times Hinkley Point C.

The country could easily solve its electricity problems with nuclear power. They can ask South Korea for help who built four reactors in UAE with 12 years which now provide 25% of the country’s electricity.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#69

Post by hunterpayne »

HtmlProgrammer wrote: post #60

My electricity costs 34 cent per Kw/h and I can’t afford solar panels or a renovation to air to water heating while the government insists we shouldn’t use oil / coal anymore nor logs or turf to heat our homes edit: I live in Ireland

That's 7x the cost that I pay in the Pacific NW. Where are you?

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#70

Post by pnw »

hackerSkoolRoot wrote: post #27

Are we allowed post masto links? I'm an Irish techie. I shot a video about this. Sorry about the camera shake: https://mastodon.ie/@handi/116900076149521593

You mention a "Chinese economic report". Are you aware the CCP has an active propaganda effort against Western data centers?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/business/china-russia-ai-...

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