The National Grid could struggle to supply electricity when power-hungry AI servers take a central role in society, and the UK will need many more skilled, highly qualified electrical apprentices to cope with a society so dependent upon electricity, writes SELECT president Mike Stark
One of the big developments in recent years has been the increase of artificial intelligence (AI) in our everyday lives, from digital assistants and chatbots helping us on websites to navigation apps and autocorrect on our mobile phones.
AI is going to become more prevalent in the near future, and while I’m unworried about Skynet and Arnold Schwarzenegger-look-alike cyborgs taking over the world, I am concerned about whether the UK’s current electrical infrastructure is fit for purpose and can deal with exponential increase in predicted power demands from the continued growth in electric vehicle (EV) charging units and the power-hungry data centres supporting the rollout of AI.
“Where is all this electricity going to come from?”
I remember attending a training session about 25 years ago with one of the EV charging point manufacturers and, while it was an exciting development, the standing joke with the candidates in attendance was basically: “Where is all this electricity going to come from?”
We all felt the UK’s electrical network needed to be upgraded if it was going to be able to meet the future requirements of EV charging, and now there is extra pressure on our network coming from the new data centres that are springing up to service the needs of AI.
Data centres, which have many servers as their main components, need electrical power to survive. It is, therefore, only natural that any talk about building a data centre should begin with figuring out the electrical needs and how to satisfy those power requirements.
Some of the key factors required to be considered when reviewing the power requirements are the capacity, auxiliary power, reliability and tiers, usage, power distribution and redundancy – all key elements around the electrical design of a data centre. But within data centres there are not just the electricity requirements for the servers but also the requirements for cooling, again with the added provision of redundancy.
Researchers have already been sounding the alarm about AI’s hefty energy requirements. They estimate that by 2027 there could be 1.5m AI servers. Running at full capacity, these servers would consume at least 85.4 terawatt-hours of electricity annually – more than what many small countries use in a year – so they will have a major impact on the grid, not just in cities but in countries too.
The scenario is that by 2027, AI servers could consume between 85 and 134 terawatt hours per year, roughly equivalent to the current energy demand of countries such as Argentina, Netherlands and Sweden.
At present, the UK’s National Grid appears to be holding its own with the current increases being met with renewable energy systems but as technology advances further and systems such as AI are being introduced, there will be a time when the grid will struggle to support the demands and needs.
Because of all the new wind farms that are being developed around the shores of the UK, the grid is now having to review the use of and add in additional overhead pylons and their associated lines just to get the energy created by the wind farms back into the grid.
Training electrical apprentices to meet future demands
Regardless of how policymakers tackle the issue, of one thing I am certain: we need, as leaders of a vital sector of the UK economy, to stress consistently and with some urgency to these same policymakers the importance of ensuring there is a continued pipeline of electrical apprentices to meet the future demands of a society that will depend so heavily on electricity.
We have to have people who are qualified, skilled and knowledgeable to be able to introduce and oversee this new technology, which is why we need more properly trained and suitably qualified electrical apprentices, acting as the vanguard of our industry.
I’ve been involved in this for the last eight years and it has become a bit of a passion for me. It’s all right bringing in all this new technology, but we have to have people who are qualified, skilled and knowledgeable to be able to introduce it, to oversee it and to apply it to – and that’s why we obviously need more electrical apprentices as the vanguard of our industry to ensure these exciting new technologies work for us and society in general.
Equally, it is important that companies take on the right type of person, who will be able to cope with the demands of a potential four-year apprenticeship programme, particularly the college work with homework and deadlines, which might come as a shock to a young person who thought they had said just goodbye to school.
We need people who can apply themselves correctly, show that they are willing to learn and always ask questions. It’s a big learning curve, as we know, but the rewards are there for the taking.
