Power Consumption And Datacenters
Blocks&Files, Thursday, July 10th, 2025
Datacenters face a period of power supply limitations that affect their growth and the growth of the IT services they will provide. Lower power-consuming IT devices will help but the GPUs needed for AI use vastly more electricity than X86 servers.
Hyperscalers can build their own datacenter energy generators but the rest of us are dependent on national grids and they are slow-development systems, meaning we face a restriction on the growth of IT services for businesses and consumers as IT service demand will exceed electricity supply growth.
Datacenter growth is continuing. Research from the Dell'Oro Group shows the Data Center Physical Infrastructure (DCPI) market grew 17 percent YoY in 1Q 2025. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, fueled by continued investment from hyperscalers and colocation providers building out capacity to cope with demand of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. It noted surging adoption of liquid cooling (DLC revenue doubled), high-density power racks nearing 600 kW, and 40 percent+ growth in power distribution systems like busways.