There should be more incentive to build data centers in the north, where there is plenty of renewable power but limited capacity to transport that power south.
Germany also has a single pricing zone and a similar north/south problem. It causes expensive curtailment and redispatch operations whenever the grid cannot physically transport the power from north to south the way it was traded.
It's all well to say there should be more incentive to build data centres in the North, but physics is physics.
The reason, data centers choose to be near London is because there is no pricing advantage to go up north. Even though energy is plentiful, readily accessible, and often curtailed when there's too much of it there. If there was a pricing difference, you'd see a lot more economic activity up north.
Basically the physical advantage is there but the lack of economics cover it up and wipe out the advantage.
If it costs less up north, then there would be incentive to move demand there (for data centers, which is more location agnostic). But if the price is the same up north, then the locality becomes a deciding factor.
in a jungle there are niches, and opportunities, and even though there are very strong participants, no one is invincible, especially outside their niche.
The bankers would learn about scotland and everyone else would be better off.
He was rather pissed off about it. That and some remark that they didn't produce enough gas for the entire country. He said, we are suppose to make enough gas for the entire country but do so without selling it. They did have an association with plans to make biogas from hemp at scale. It just cant happen.
edit: Apparently their law makers came to their senses since.
There are clustering advantages for data centres. Lower inter-cluster latency being key. I do not think the UK market is large enough for two hubs, really.
The UK government is now touting datacentre sites with better access to the national grid (transmission network) to avoid the issues inherent in the distribution networks. E.g. Culham which had a grid connection to power the JET fusion experiments.
London is just slow and bureaucratic af
Britain seems interested in actively undoing technological progress for some reason. A deindustrial revolution you might call it!
That means most grid infrastructure is now under utilised, and skills needed to build any new grid have dried up.
Presumably there are still a few pockets that are at capacity, and that's where the problem lies.
Huge power hungry GPU farms for AI training will end up built elsewhere...
They literally invented the idea of applying Contracts for Difference from finance to help build nuclear in the UK.
Those have massively helped renewables get built in the UK and elsewhere by letting governments cheaply subsidize financial risk in energy investments while allowing competitive developers to bid the price lower.
But it wasn't enough for nuclear, where the builders didn't want to be on the hook for the inevitable doubling (or worse) of final cost, so they wrote special rules for new nuclear to be paid in advance and not held to cost estimates.
Sounds relatively fair to me - since the vast majority of delays and cost is government initiated (or enabled: e.g. giving power to NIMBY groups). Ideally there are carve-outs for any delays or cost overruns solely the fault of the builders and operators. Projects like these always will have a certain amount of incompetence and graft to them, unfortunately.
Maybe once/if the nuclear industry can get un-destroyed by the government that destroyed it in the first place, these subsidies can go away. If subsidies are good for green energy, they are good for kickstarting the nuclear energy segment again. If countries can successfully hold the line and stick to a 20 year program of increasing the pace and velocity of building new plants a robust industry just might emerge.
So many commenters about London on here who don't actually live here.
You could easily build plenty of high rises but they are either insanely overpriced or extremely poor quality in London.
Better to raze them and build apartment buildings.
Subdivide in 16 Shoebox rooms give it a party / commune vibe and laughing to the bank.
Bonus points if it’s not up to building code
Everyone seems to be carrying a smartphone, continuously creating more high res photos and videos..