As a nation, the UK holds queues in high regard. To those watching from abroad, the 10-mile line to view Queen Elizabeth II’s lying-in-state seemed almost as quintessentially British as the sovereign herself. Yet it doesn’t always make sense to allocate scarce resources on a first-come-first-served basis. The rush to build data centres is an example.
Builders of facilities that power artificial intelligence — which Britain views as crucial to its economic growth — are stuck in a snaking queue to connect to the electricity grid. At the last count, the combined needs of those awaiting connections, many of them data centres, had more than tripled in a year, to 125 gigawatts. Wait times are between 8 and 10 years, thinks consultancy Ember Energy. Some face more than a decade.
