00:00Australians are creating more data than ever before, but have you ever wondered where it
00:08all goes?
00:09It's been stored in highly secured centers like this one.
00:17Before we can get in, there is an ID check and they take your fingerprints.
00:32Inside this vault, a hotel for computers.
00:37These racks are essentially where our customers house their computing infrastructure.
00:42And how do you make sure these racks are up and running 24-7?
00:45We have our power available 100% of the time.
00:49Which is crucial for the services we've come to rely on.
00:53Whether it's our healthcare, banking services, government services, there's no industry that
00:59isn't reliant on data today.
01:03Just one large data center can consume the same amount of energy required to power 50,000
01:10homes.
01:11Morgan Stanley estimates in total, data centers are currently chewing up 5% of Australia's
01:18power grid.
01:20And that's expected to grow to 8% by 2030, which some say could be underestimated.
01:27I've seen numbers that suggest by 2030, data centers could be anywhere between 5 and 15%
01:34of our electricity demand.
01:36Australia is one of the top five data center hubs in the world.
01:40Across the country, there are 214 centers like this one.
01:44And with the explosion of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, the industry
01:49is expected to grow exponentially.
01:52We believe that we are at the beginning of a massive shift with AI.
01:57We truly believe that we're at the beginning of a change in accelerated compute that could
02:02see demand skyrocket over the next decade.
02:07As the nation races to electrify, with households dumping gas appliances and more people driving
02:15electric vehicles, the grid is already under pressure.
02:19I think Australia is not terribly well placed to cope with that increasing demand.
02:25We are now hitting the difficult stages of the energy transition.
02:29We've got wind and sun and land, but we don't have other clean energy, biomass or decent
02:35amounts of hydro or nuclear.
02:37The director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Bruce Mountain, thinks the data center
02:43boom will make the energy transition more challenging.
02:47Because not just do you need to replace coal-fired generation, you need to build new capacity
02:53to meet rising demand.
02:54If you add a lot more demand and you don't add more supply, then prices go up.
03:01Victoria Energy Retailer and Generator Origin supplies power to about a third of all data
03:07centres in Australia.
03:09The man in charge of these accounts says the company is looking at a range of options to
03:14meet their needs.
03:16And typically we would look at solutions like distributed generation, so wind or solar at
03:21site, storage solutions and backup generation.
03:26And our customers with their forecasts would vary somewhat, but typically those growth
03:31forecasts could be between about 10 and 30 per cent per year.
03:36To meet those energy demands, companies could be strategic about where they build data centres.
03:43One of the interesting features of this data centre growth is that some of the locations
03:48could be more regional and that can match some of the new renewable generation.
03:54Carrying the load as challenges grow on Australia's energy grid.
04:01www.australianenergygrid.com
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