Data centre growth pushes Hydro Ottawa to limits
Context:
Hydro Ottawa is facing unprecedented, skyrocketing power demand driven primarily by new data centres, putting immense pressure on its electrical grid and requiring a massive acceleration of infrastructure investment.
Members of the media may directly contact the following experts:
Javad Fattahi (English and French)
Assistant professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering
Professor Fattahi’s research interests encompass smart grids, energy equity and inclusion, distributed energy resources (DER), smart e-mobility, hybrid energy storage, software-defined microgrid, digital twins, game theory and complex optimization, nanogenerators, modular power electronics, and nonlinear systems.
"The scale and speed of AI-driven load growth are exposing the limits of traditional utility planning. Grid flexibility, digitalization, advanced power electronics, and firm clean generation sources located closer to demand centres, including options such as small modular reactors, are becoming increasingly important. When a utility is asked to add in a few years what took more than a century to build, conventional approaches are no longer sufficient; innovation must become a core component of proactive infrastructure planning."
Riadh Habash (English only)
Special Appointment Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering
[email protected] (English interviews in print only)
Professor Habash research focuses on sustainable energy and power systems. He can discuss topics related to generation, transmission, and distribution.