The largest Russian private company in the field of electric power and heat supply, "T Plus", proposed to the Ministry of Energy to use the reserve capacity of thermal power plants (TPPs) to power data centers (DCs). This was stated by Maxim Zhdanov, head of the department of industry regulation and market development at "T Plus". He spoke at a round table in the State Duma dedicated to removing barriers to investing in data centers.
The company proposes to locate data centers on power plant sites and directly power them. That is, servers will operate literally next to the energy source, bypassing common networks.
The main barrier for data center operators is the ability to quickly obtain electrical power. According to the Ministry of Energy, the existing capacity of Russian data centers is 4.5 GW, of which 77% falls on closed corporate sites.
The demand for data centers gravitates towards Moscow, because the main corporate customers are concentrated here. But the power system in Moscow is not limitless, especially since there are restrictions on maintaining a power reserve at the level of 15%.
The idea of using underutilized TPP capacities is feasible, according to Petr Istomin, leader of the "Data Center, Telecom, Banking" segment at Chint in Russia. The utilization rate of installed TPP capacity in the regions also suggests a reserve. However, according to the expert, this does not apply to Moscow and the Moscow region.
A data center is a specialized building or complex of premises where servers, data storage systems, and network equipment are located. Cloud services, websites, mobile applications, banking systems, state digital platforms, neural networks, and other internet services operate in data centers.
The main task of a data center is to ensure uninterrupted operation of equipment. For this, data centers are equipped with several independent power sources, backup diesel generators, cooling systems, fire extinguishing systems, physical security, and high-speed communication channels.