AI data centres drive down power bills – at least that is the headline that Nextdc’s Shayne Kumar led with at this week’s energy forum in Melbourne.
He says AI data centres “actually help to drive down power bills” by creating a flat load that sucks up excess solar and drives up network use during the day.
“They can actually help to drive up utilisation during the hours the grid is not utilised and help to smooth out the costs that would otherwise be leveraged onto affiliate consumers,” he said at Australian Energy Week.
“Enabling growth at data centres does actually help drive down the network component of bills, so 30-40 per cent of bills.”
Kumar was at his most controversial at the AEW conference, pushing networks to move faster, and even saying that using data centres’ backup diesel generators might be a better option than building new gas peaking plants as a way to unleash “inherent” flexibility.
