The battle of Europe for power leads to the development of the new ecosystem of power

The prosperity in artificial intelligence, the urgent need for more databases and energy transmission story – especially in transportation – all stimulates the demand for electricity, and the current energy infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with this.

Experts told CNBC that companies are facing waiting times from five to eight years to communicate with tense electricity networks in Europe. According to IEA, At least 1500 gigawatts From global clean energy projects, or delay has been suspended due to the lack of network connections, and about $ 700 billion of the network is needed for countries to achieve their green goals.

Data centers and large facilities that include servers for computing operations and often require huge quantities powerDiego Hernandez Diaz, the McKinsey partner, said that the “primary director” of that growing competition to communicate with the network.

He told CNBC that the customers have quoted waiting times for up to eight years to connect to the network.

“There are some operators of transportation systems in Europe, who are already facing two, three or more people who are trying to communicate with the same node at the same time … There is a literal waiting list in individual contact points to find out who will call first,” he explained.

Hernandez, whose work focuses on intensive electricity industries, said that over the past 18 months, almost all his business focused on data centers, a sector that is expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 20 % over the next six years. It is expected that the demand for the facilities required to train large language models (LLMS) will continue to continue Significant increase The giants also technology race to control artificial intelligence.

Energy Management Company Schneider Electricity He was warned in a report in January that Europe is facing a waving force crisis on the horizon, with waiting lists from three to five years of network communications in energy -restricting areas.

“It is a kind of race,” Stephen Carlin, the chief defender of the data centers and data centers in Schneider Electricity, told CNBC. “You have all these companies that are trying to spread as much capacity as possible. But they are restricted to the number of graphics processing units) and available power and permits.”

Carlini said: “We move from a position that you have one or two requests (to connect to the network) per year, in some countries, to 1000.”

Not only is the amount of investment needed – but also the speed it can be published – which will be a key to address the problem, said MCKINSEY’s DIAZ. He also pointed to the increasing complexity of the work of high -voltage network operators and Germany, which needs to move from 400 km of power lines annually to 2000 km.

Diaz sees the competition to communicate with the network “Either Preserving or Interesting” in 2025.

Jerome Furnier, the company’s vice president at Nexans, said his company has a “huge” accumulation in the range of seven to 10 billion euros (7.28 billion dollars to $ 10.40 billion). Nexans cables are used to transport electricity resulting from wind and solar farms, and to provide energy to homes and companies.

“Everyone is thinking about: Do we still have space in our plans to manufacture other projects?” He said.

Fournier CNBC told companies that companies like Nexans should also keep holes available for smaller projects such as interconnection for marine wind turbines. “You must have the right balance between the load of plans and profitability and this type of electrification,” he said.

In the future, the data centers are expected to be at the center of this ecosystem of the network, especially if they are able to generate their own power Small units reactions Small nuclear reactors that produce electricity.

Battery storage Carlin said strategic shipment has also been of increased importance. These systems allow the storage of temporary energy from the power network to provide an additional backup.

The CEO of the Power Solutions Avk, Ben Bretshard, said that some European countries face large calls of 100 megawatts of a size that they have not seen before.

It calls for the energy -related energy solutions such as the use of MicroGRIDS, which is the island’s separate energy system.

In Norway, they try Flexible contact agreements Where customers have a network connection based on some circumstances, Beatrice Petrovic, chief energy and climate analyst at Think Tank Ember. This allows them to set their use of energy depending on how the network commits at certain times.

He also called Ember to implement the rules on what he calls Network investments. Petrovic explained that this would allow the electricity network operators to plan in an appropriate manner, taking into account the market trends of the main technologies, such as growing in renewable energy sources and storing batteries.

Bretshard of AVK said that countries that are moving forward with improving legislation on enabling companies to obtain a fully energy staple will be the “race winner”, which offers a “more friendly environmental system” around data centers.

Ultimately, the bottleneck in the network “encourages people to think differently, and when people are encouraged to think differently, they are more open to different solutions. I think, the market believes that the market is turning greatly,” said Britthard.