Data centers are now popping up in Finland at a breakneck pace

Finland’s data center boom is accelerating. Projects are coming to the public almost every week now. Investments are needed, but there are pitfalls hidden in the drug. The world should now take an example and avoid the worst mistakes.

According to last fall’s market survey of the Confederation of Finnish Business, the publicly announced investment plans of data center operators are worth a total of 12 billion euros, and the total potential is more than 30 billion.

Not all plans are likely to come true. Trade magazine found out in February (16.2.)that data center projects worth more than ten billion euros are currently being built in Finland.

At the same time, the data center boom in the United States is booming. It is estimated that around half of the data centers planned for this year will either be delayed or cancelled, says the news company Bloomberg.

In particular, data centers running artificial intelligence consume huge amounts of energy. Electricity production and energy infrastructure cannot keep up with the growth in demand. There has also been a shortage of components, transformers and connections.

The problem has worsened as the AI ​​boom has exploded demand. The electricity network is not designed for such rapid growth. In the worst areas, the electricity network is at its limit and the queues for new connections are even years long.

In problem areas, the same pattern repeats itself: Large data center operators come to the same area and demand grows faster than infrastructure can be built.

Along with the capacity problems, the resistance of the locals is also growing. The number of data centers is growing rapidly. They are even bigger and more visible. Large windowless boxes are not pleasing to the eye. They take up a lot of space and directly employ relatively few people.

In the United States, data centers already appear on people’s electricity bills in some places. The cooling noise is annoying. Opponents feel that they suffer the disadvantages and the tech giants reap the benefits.

In Finland, the situation is still not nearly as bad. However, with the current course of development in Finland, the same type of problems as in the United States threaten to arise in the future.

Although new renewable electricity production is being built in connection with data centers, it is not enough on its own. In certain areas, there may be large concentrations of data centers, which create bottlenecks and congest the electricity grid.

As more data centers become available, the general attitude towards them may weaken. With these prospects, data centers will increase the average price of electricity, when there will be more expensive hours and fewer cheap ones. In some areas, even the network is no longer enough for everything.

The most likely congestion areas are in southern Finland. Network company Fingrid already states directly that Southern Finland’s electricity grid cannot withstand all data center projects (Yle 10.4.).

Attracting data centers should include realism about the system’s carrying capacity. At the moment, electricity production and the grid are not sized to meet their demand.