The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and metaverse is seen as game-changing factor that will trigger exponential rise in the energy demand of data centers due to the high-powered computing usage of hyperscalers.

According to Victor Emmanuel S. Genuino II, president and CEO of ePLDT, the multi-cloud, cybersecurity services and data center solutions subsidiary of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), the groundbreaking innovations happening in the AI world as well as the anticipated developments in the metaverse sphere will triple or quadruple the energy demand of the hyperscalers – collectively known as GFAM, in reference to Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft or GFAAM, with the inclusion of Alibaba.

Hyperscaler companies are those massive companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, which dominate the public cloud and hybrid cloud services industries and related businesses. 

He noted that the energy demand of hyperscalers per rack in their servers currently stands at 15 kilowatts (kW), but with the flourishing of AI like ChatGPT and even its linked revolutionary AI learning tool for children like Furwee, the magnitude of energy needs of such powerful computing power could top 50kW per rack.

Beyond AI’s avalanche, another realm in the digital frontier that could accelerate energy demand of a country hosting the operations of data centers would be advancements in the metaverse or that technology-enabled system that blurs reality in the virtual space because users can already interact on various concerns and activities like gaming, education, commerce and even entertainment just within the bounds of computer-generated environment.

“Because of the amount of computing that’s required by AI, the energy demand will grow much, much more. Then metaverse will also fuel a lot of data and power computing, there’s so many things that will just add up to the need for more computing power, which will need more power supply to run all of these servers in the data centers,” he stressed.

Genuino primarily cited that with ChatGPT, the current energy demand had gone up to 45 to 50kW per rack from the usual demand of hyperscalers at 15kW per rack.

He qualified there is specific differentiation on the energy needs of hyperscalers because when they decide to set up operations in a particular market or country, “they scale so much quickly; they expand very fast and the ramp up in their usage of power could also happen very fast, so that shall be matched in the power plant development and energy planning of the host-market.”

In the emerging pace of data centers’ buildout in the country, he stated that the crucial timeline will be year 2027, because it is seen that the growth in energy demand of the sector could top 400 megawatts. And with the stream of AI-driven future and the ever-expanding metaverse, power supply demand expansion could triple or quadruple by then to a colossal 1,200 to 1,600MW.

Typically, the ePLDT executive emphasized that the usual electricity demand of data centers per rack for the computing needs of enterprises would be at 3kW, but that could go higher with hyperscalers; while reiterating that the mega-growth triggers will be AI and metaverse.

Apart from hyperscalers, the suite of other customers being catered to by data centers include ‘content delivery networks’ (CDNs) like those on Tiktok and other apps with videos; as well as other information technology infrastructure that are into lightning-fast delivery of data and information on web pages, images and other digital contents (including gaming apps); then there are also ‘enterprises’ like the big banks, hotels, retail and manufacturing; and the others in the chain would be government institutions, primarily on their need for storage of sensitive and classified information, such as those of the national ID system.

Genuino thus expounded that “if the country would be serious in positioning itself as a hub for hyperscalers, then the government has to be part of the journey in providing solution for reliable energy supply that will power the data centers.”

He enthused “imagine if there are hyperscalers wanting to set up their operations in the country, then we can’t provide them with reliable energy, that will be wasted infrastructure and investment that we could have attracted in the country.”

Genuino added “I guess the question is: on the context of energy security, how will you power up the data centers? If we want to become a regional hyperscalers hub, the data center infrastructure has to be built in parallel with energy infrastructure.”

Alfredo S. Panlilio, president and CEO of PLDT, similarly indicated that apart from power supply, the hyperscalers and enterprise-clients in general are also batting for renewable energy (RE) component that they will be sourcing as part of their contracted energy supply.

“Power supply is an issue; power cost is an issue – but I think the bigger issue is renewables. For hyperscalers and even with enterprises, they’re already asking, we’ll only contract if there’s renewables. If you’re not a green supplier, you can’t get hyperscalers as customers,” he asserted.

He explained “hyperscalers are not exactly demanding for immediate 100-percent renewable energy supply, they’re telling us that they can have gradual ramp up and they can start with 10 or 20-percent, but the questions they would always ask are: what is the energy mix of the Philippines and what is the RE roadmap of the country? So what they want in particular, for example, if the goal of the GFAM would be to go carbon-neutral by 2030, how does the Philippines fit into that carbon-neutral agenda?”

Panlilio said “there’s no hard and fast rule with regard to expectation of hyperscalers having renewables – what they just want is the certainty that we have a firm plan, that we have RE roadmap and it’s efficiently implemented.

Beyond hosting data centers, Panlilio highlighted that the Philippines really has great potential to be strategically positioned as the ‘transit hub’ for hyperscalers in the Asian region, especially so since many of them are relocating their operations from Hongkong due to ‘geopolitical reasons’; and the others from Singapore due to the moratorium enforced by the government of that ASEAN-neighbor.