Early this month (September 2025) there was much fanfare over the opening of the Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Data Centre in Auckland. There will be more of these multi-national facilities, which export our electrons, to come in the future. One benefit to them is to be able to promote their use of our ‘Green Energy’. National Radio reported on the launch in their ‘Nine to Noon’ programme of 2nd September at 10:30am “Amazon Opens Data Centres promises 1,000 Jobs”.

The next day (3rd September) at 7:18am, National Radio’s ‘Morning Report’ had an informative interview “Vector on Energy Demand for Amazon’s Data Centres” which included a prediction that soon 40% of Auckland’s Peak Demand for electricity will be needed for the local data centres. Apparently the Gentailers’ Supply Contracts with big customers include provisions for load shedding in dry years, or other occasions of limited supply. By their very nature data centres cannot comply with this as they require a 24/7 uninterrupted electricity supply. On the same day, 3rd September, ‘Nine to Noon’ presented at 9:15am an interview giving a New Zealand perspective “Local Cloud Storage Competitor Sceptical of Amazon’s Data Centre Claims”.

In my EBOSS Blog of February 2022 Blog “Are New Zealanders to become Electricity Paupers?” I discuss the arrival of Big Data and the then anticipated closure of the Tiwai Point smelter. This includes a link to a Stuff-online article reporting on a proposal to use the coming surplus electricity from Manapouri. The article also leads to a fascinating web of interlinked links, including information about the AWS facility now launched in Auckland.

In my May 2024 Blog, “Where is our Electricity Going?”, I returned to the subject of electricity supply emergencies, and the future. For a detailed description of the past and future direction of our energy sector, Jesse Mulligan interviews Geoff Bertram on his National Radio ‘Afternoons’ programme of 15th September, at 2:30pm – “Expert Feature: Let’s Talk Energy, Interviewing Geoff Bertram”. Geoff is an economist and writer with decades of experience looking at the energy sector.

One often repeated suggestion to increase the electricity supply is to build a nuclear power station. Aside from the time and expense required to build such a facility I express my view on the impracticability of this solution in my Blog of April 2022, “Will New Zealand’s Energy Supplies Need to go Nuclear?”.

Aside from electricity, data centres also require large amounts of water to dissipate the large amounts of waste heat generated by the continual operation of the servers. The data centre itself is essentially just a large warehouse protecting the contents from weather and unwanted intrusion. Inside it is packed with computer servers, which as the name suggests, are computers that provides data or other resources to other computers over a network — the Cloud. This is different to the computers (like laptops) used by people to undertake differing particular tasks on a daily basis. If the reader should like to find a definition of what a ‘Computer Server’ is then their computer would send a request to a data centre where the server would find the information from its vast database and return it to the reader’s computer for display. Servers are essentially electronic libraries just the same as a physical book library where the librarian will search the vast collection of books to satisfy your request.

To quote from Chrome search; “A computer server is a powerful, high-performance computer designed to provide services, resources, or data to other computers, known as Clients, over a network.” … “They are built with robust hardware and specialized operating systems to handle continuous operation and high volumes of requests.” It is this continuous and heavy energy demand which generates the waste heat which must be continually removed, normally by water. Will Auckland need to ration water in the future due to the need of data centres to have a 24/7 uninterrupted cooling water supply?

In my July 2025 Blog “Flood-plains and Floating Houses” I refer to the coming Regulatory Standards Bill to be considered by Parliament and give the example, if passed, of owners being able to claim compensation if in the future they are prevented from developing their flood-prone land, eg. for housing as they now can. In his interview Geoff Bertram points out that the provisions of the Bill would probably also apply if a very large windfarm should be developed, and therefore disrupt the energy market. The Gentailer shareholders could be able to ask for compensation for their lost future profits. An effective way to stifle innovation.