Data centre demand to rise with data use, smart cities: Schneider Electric

Rising data consumption and the rollout of smart cities will drive demand for data centres in India, even as their energy use remains a small share of the overall power ecosystem

The demand for data centres in India will continue to rise in the near future as total data consumption from the digitalisation of services continues to increase, along with new data generated by the smart cities in the execution phase right now, said Nirupa Chander, the senior vice president of secure power, data centres and power systems at Schneider Electric. 

Though the electricity consumption by data centres, including artificial intelligence (AI) data centres is two per cent of the total energy ecosystem, and can rise to four per cent as the number of such data centres across the globe double, it will still be a minuscule amount compared to the total energy consumption across the ecosystem, Chander said.  

The conversation on how to build a sustainable energy management ecosystem has to be done by integrating demand from both data centres and household consumption grids, she said, adding that India remained an underserved market for data centre growth. 

“Nearly 20 per cent of the data is generated here in India, but only 2-3 per cent of that is processed domestically. The demand for more data being processed closer to the point of consumption will drive the need for more data centres and hence efficient energy systems,” she said. 

For Schneider Electric, which today powers one out of every four data centres worldwide, India remains a strategic market, as the country’s total data centre capacity is likely to reach 7-8 gigawatt (GW) from the current 1.5-2 GW operational or close to operational right now, Chander said.