%Electricity demand is rising in Canada as the country attracts a growing number of data centres.
The Canada Energy Regulator is warning that the proliferation of data centres could strain the country’s existing power grid and says that solutions are needed to handle larger power loads.
Canada is currently home to 239 data centres that primarily handle cloud-computing workloads, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence (A.I.) applications.
The province of Ontario has the most data centres at 105, with Quebec and British Columbia home to 57 and 35 data centres, respectively.
The current size of Canada’s data centre market has been estimated at 750 mega watts (MW) of electricity consumption.
However, the Canada Energy Regulator has forecast that data centre energy consumption will double by the end of 2026.
Canada is attractive to data centres because of its cold temperatures and low electricity costs, especially in provinces with abundant hydroelectricity such as Quebec.
With 80% of Canada’s electricity coming from clean sources, the country is also attractive to companies looking to build data centres that have a low carbon footprint.
Consequently, Canadian utilities are having to factor data centre growth into their forecasts of electricity demand and consumption.
Utility Hydro Quebec has said that it is projecting exponential growth in data centre electricity demand between now and 2032.