Britain wants to be an AI superpower. One of its flagship data centres cannot get the electricity to switch on. Nscale’s £2bn Essex site has the money, the planning permission, and a grid connection, but no power arriving in time.
Nscale has the cash, the site, and the customer. What it does not have is a plug.
The British AI firm, backed by Nvidia, is building a £2bn data centre at Loughton in Essex, with Microsoft signed up as its anchor tenant. It won planning permission and a 90-megawatt grid connection. Then it learned the power would not arrive in time to open the site next year, Sifted reported.
So the company is now shopping for its own electricity. It is looking at on-site generation, including reported talks with a California fuel-cell maker, rather than waiting on the National Grid. “We remain fully committed to the Loughton project,” a spokesperson said.
The queue nobody can skip
