India preferred data centre destination, no power shortage: Piyush Goyal

Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday said India is a preferred destination for data centres as the country has no dearth of electricity and its 500GW national grid can take care of surge in demand.

During a press conference on energy sector, Goyal, former Power and New & Renewable Energy minister, said there is sufficient power capacity in the country.

He said that the 500GW grid is one of the largest in the world.

"...Europe does not have a national grid. Even the US does not have a national grid. But India has a national grid. So we are a preferred destination for data centres and as they are planning a growth in the years to come. There will be sufficient power available to make sure that we meet the need of our people, farmers, industry and commercial establishments including data centres and GCCs," Goyal said.

This comes at a time when various tech giants including Google, Microsoft and AWS have evinced interest in investing in India.

In October, Google announced that it will invest $15 billion in building an AI infrastructure hub in Andhra Pradesh, which would include a gigawatt-scale data centre in partnership with Adani Group.

Last week, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced investment of $7 billion to expand data centres in Telangana over 14 years.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced plans to invest $17.5 billion in India to help build infrastructure and sovereign capabilities for the country's AI-first future.

About India's plan to add coal-based thermal power generation capacity in the country, Goyal said the coal-based capacity addition will be to meet the need of the people of India.

"We cannot allow the people to be deprived of adequate power...coal production will also help us reduce import further (of the dry fuel). We have already reduced our imports. We are also looking at coal alternatives like coal being converted to synthetic gas. We must recognise that we are a developing nation, we need transition time and low cost energy, to be able to meet the growing need of a large nation and need of our industrial growth as well as prosperity of the common man," he said.

India will take a pragmatic view to keep its energy cost low while simultaneously working towards clean energy framework, he stated.

He informed that the projected thermal power requirement in 2035 is expected to grow to 307GW.

About the improving financial health of the power generation firms he said these companies had debt of Rs 1.4 lakh crore four years ago, which has been reduced to Rs 6,500 crore.

"As we march towards Viksit Bharat@2047...India's energy sector will be seen as a global case study in managing scale, speed and sustainability together," he said.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Power Shripad Naik in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha said:" Presently, power requirement of data centres in the country is approximately 1 GW which is estimated to increase up to 13.56 GW by FY 2031-32 on account of upcoming data centres."  Captive power is arranged for self consumption by the users on their own. As of now, details of electricity consumed by data centres are not centrally maintained, he informed the House.