"18 Degrees Is My Favorite, I Want to Live in the Capital Area"… '6,500 Cars Charging Simultaneously' Data Center Using Electricity [AI Era, Electric Power Is National Strength]①

Increasing Number of Data Centers... Soaring Electricity Consumption
AI Data Centers Use Over Six Times More Power Than Before
Securing Electricity Determines National Competitiveness in the AI Era

Editor's NoteThe era of 'electricity hegemony' is upon us. Data centers for artificial intelligence (AI) services consume enormous amounts of electricity, and with the electrification of transportation such as electric vehicles and the advancement of displays, electricity demand is skyrocketing. It is predicted that as AI becomes widespread, the electricity consumption of AI data centers worldwide will rival that of a developed country. We are entering an era where economic development is impossible without electricity. Global big tech companies are competitively securing electric energy to ensure stable AI services. Major advanced countries' governments are also rushing to improve power infrastructure to avoid falling behind in AI and advanced industry competition. While securing as much electricity as possible is important, how it is produced must also be addressed significantly. In the era of carbon neutrality, active efforts are underway to utilize zero-carbon energy sources such as nuclear power, solar, wind, and hydrogen in AI data centers. Meanwhile, various technologies to reduce electricity consumption are also being developed. The electricity issue in the AI era also presents new business opportunities. Asia Economy visited various domestic sites to examine the current status of electricity consumption and production, introducing vivid movements responding to the surging electricity demand.

I am an artificial intelligence (AI) data center. I have no windows. This is to maintain strict security as I store vast amounts of data. For servers and communication equipment to operate stably, dust must not accumulate, and temperature and humidity must be kept constant. The most important thing is to minimize energy loss. People call me the 'electricity-guzzling hippo.'

Exterior of SK Broadband Gasan Data Center. Provided by SK Broadband

In Gasan-dong, Seoul, SK Broadband built the largest urban data center (Gasan Center) in 2021. It has an IT load of 46 MW, which is equivalent to the electricity used by 230,000 household computers rated at 200W running simultaneously. It is also enough capacity to charge 6,500 electric vehicles simultaneously using 7 kW slow chargers.

I operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without rest. Data centers that consume this much electricity are rapidly increasing every year. The number of data centers nationwide was 139 in 2020 and increased to 161 in 2024. That is a 16% increase in five years. The contract power that Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) promised to supply to these data centers also increased from 1.6 GW in 2020 to 2.5 GW in 2024. Unit 6 of the Hanul Nuclear Power Plant in Uljin is a 1,000 MW-class nuclear reactor, and its construction took 6 years and 3 months. 2,499 MW is roughly equivalent to building 2 to 3 such nuclear reactors.

The amount of electricity I use will increase even faster in the future. According to a 2023 survey by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the demand for new data centers will reach 723 by 2029, with power capacity used reaching 49 GW. Experts say that to operate properly, more power plants need to be built or more transmission lines laid.

Especially with the spread of AI, electricity demand has increased further. To train AI models or provide services like ChatGPT, high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) capable of processing enormous amounts of data simultaneously and rapidly are required. AI data centers are known to consume six times more power than conventional data centers. Do you know the biggest cause of electronic device failure? It is heat. About 40% of the electricity I use goes to cooling the heat generated by equipment. By the way, I like 18 degrees Celsius the most.

The Gasan Center, with a total floor area of 69,000 square meters, 10 floors above ground and 5 underground, has cooling facilities underground and temperature and humidity control on each floor. Since the Hyundai Department Store Trade Center branch has a sales area of about 50,000 square meters, you can think of it as similar in size to a large department store. As hyperscale data centers housing more than 100,000 servers increase, technologies to reduce heat generation will become increasingly important.

However, there are many concerns. Although enormous amounts of electricity will be needed in the future, it will not be easy to secure supply. In the densely populated metropolitan area, residents dislike me due to concerns about electromagnetic waves. Local governments with relatively low populations and abundant electricity want to attract me. The problem is that two-thirds of data center operators, such as the three major mobile carriers, want to build me in the metropolitan area, which dislikes me. This is to reduce communication facility investment costs. Maintenance and management personnel also prefer to commute to the metropolitan area.

AI infrastructure built at SK Broadband Gasan Data Center. Provided by SK Telecom

It has become difficult for KEPCO to build transmission and transformation facilities in urban areas, and power supply has become unstable, raising the possibility of a 'blackout' in the worst case. Therefore, not only electricity supply but also how it is used will become a very important issue going forward.

The government enacted the 'Distributed Energy Activation Special Act,' which has been in effect since June last year. This law aims to relocate data centers to local areas. A representative regulation is the 'Power System Impact Assessment.' To build a data center of 10 MW or more, it must be evaluated whether stable electricity supply is possible and how much it can contribute to the local economy, such as through direct employment. However, no data center has passed this assessment since the law's implementation.

Anyway, South Korea, with nationwide communication networks, has favorable conditions for building data centers. Global companies are also paying attention to Korea. Microsoft (MS) signed an agreement with Busan City in 2016 to build a total of six data centers, and Singapore-based data center developer Empyrean Digital is building a 40 MW AI-optimized data center in Yangjae-dong, Seoul.

How electricity is secured will determine my fate. As the AI revolution spreads comprehensively, the government judges that the AI data center construction business will be a future growth engine. The Ministry of Science and ICT announced that it will secure 15,000 NVIDIA H100 units within this year and build a 'National AI Computing Center' in non-metropolitan areas by 2027. The era where electricity procurement determines national competitiveness has arrived.