The launch of a massive AI data centre in Essex has been pushed back from 2027 to the 2030s because of grid connection and power supply issues.
In September 2025, US tech giants announced numerous investments in the UK as part of the UK-US Tech Prosperity Deal. One of these included a partnership between Microsoft and UK-based AI start-up Nscale to build the “UK’s largest supercomputer”, with more than 23,000 advanced Nvidia GPUs, based in Loughton, Essex.
At the time, it was announced that the £2bn data centre would come online in 2027. However, this has now been pushed back to the early to mid-2030s. The reason is the local grid network simply does not have the capacity to power this energy-hungry facility.
Grid-connection times have become a serious bottleneck for new data centres, with the queue for connections massively oversubscribed.
To combat this, Ofgem recently updated the rules around data centres to force them to pay millions of pounds upfront in order to secure their spot in...