The UK’s electricity grid is “overwhelmed” by a flood of connection requests, with new demand tripling in the last year, driven primarily by a rush for data centres.
The surge is now so large that energy regulator Ofgem has warned “speculative” and “less viable projects” from data-hub developers are clogging the connection queue, blocking viable projects that are ready to build.
National Grid’s CEO, John Pettigrew, confirmed on Thursday that data hubs now “dominate” requests and account for “more than half” of new demand, reports Bloomberg.
Data from Ofgem shows total contracted offers in the demand queue jumped from 41 GW in November 2024 to 125 GW by June 2025. This total is more than twice the UK’s current peak demand.
Immense new demand
The scale of this new demand is immense. According to Aurora Energy Research, a single 100-megawatt data centre can consume as much electricity as 260,000 homes.
In Buckinghamshire, National Grid is already building a new substation at Uxbridge Moor, the largest on its network by gigawatt capacity, to connect over a dozen new data centres. That single project will require 1.8 GW of new capacity, which National Grid described as “equivalent to adding a mid-sized city to the grid”.
In response to the surge, Ofgem announced on November 6 that it is taking urgent action to “curate a viable queue”. The regulator, alongside the National Energy System Operator (NESO), is launching a “Call for Input” to gather deeper insight into the composition of the queue, with the aim of ensuring developers can demonstrate their projects are mature and ready to proceed.
Alongside regulatory action, National Grid is piloting a high-tech solution to manage the demand, partnering with Emerald AI in a UK-first trial to make data centres flexible grid assets.
The trial, set for late 2025, will use an AI-powered system and NVIDIA GPUs to “dynamically adjust energy consumption”. This would allow data centres to “temporarily dial down energy usage” during periods of peak demand, a move that could unlock existing grid capacity and accelerate connections.
“This groundbreaking trial with Emerald AI demonstrates how innovative technologies can help us optimise the grid,” said Steve Smith, chief strategy and regulation officer at National Grid.
Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO of Emerald AI, added: “This partnership is about showing that AI infrastructure doesn’t have to be a burden on the grid — it can be a critical asset.”
