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Speaker 1: We're about to join the AI race. Were the first

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Speaker 1: center given the green light. This is an AI data

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Speaker 1: sent to give them the green light in southand data grid

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Speaker 1: to the company. They've got resource consent for a three

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Speaker 1: billion dollars seventy eight thousand square meter data sent to

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Speaker 1: twelve hundred jobs to build it. It'll use two hundred

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Speaker 1: and eighty megawatts of electricity. Doctor Olrik Speidel is a

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Speaker 1: senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Auckland

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Speaker 1: and as well. It's very good morning to.

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Speaker 2: You, Gordon, warning Mike, it seems good.

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Speaker 1: It seems very good news. Are we behind the eight

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Speaker 1: ball a bit? Shouldn't we have a few more of these?

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Speaker 1: Given what's happened globally?

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Speaker 2: Well two an extents on looking at it at that

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Speaker 2: particular project, it's actually quite interesting because you've just mentioned

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Speaker 2: a cigarette after off two hundred and eighty megawatts that

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Speaker 2: it's going to have in terms of power consumption, and

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Speaker 2: if you look at how that fits into the big picture,

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Speaker 2: you actually realized that this is not a sort of

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Speaker 2: a trivial amount. It's roughly the same amount you know,

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Speaker 2: ballpark wise that Wellington takes some power, and so building

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Speaker 2: this is going to be you know, obviously, you know,

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Speaker 2: the significant chunk of of the generation in the South

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Speaker 2: Island because you know, we you know, generate a lot

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Speaker 2: more power in the suth Island than we do in

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Speaker 2: the North Island. So this is going to add you know,

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Speaker 2: quite a bit to the load in the South Island

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Speaker 2: when once it's up and running. And yeah, this thousand,

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Speaker 2: two hundred jobs for building It sounds really really great.

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Speaker 2: But my questions really, once it's up and running, how

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Speaker 2: many jobs are they going to be?

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Speaker 1: I already know the answer. The answer is fifty. It

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Speaker 1: takes nothing to run a data set. The US arguments

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Speaker 1: around once these things arrive, and that things arrive in town,

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Speaker 1: they suck up the power and the price of power

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Speaker 1: goes up. Can we negate that are we smart enough

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Speaker 1: to have worked all that out and get around it?

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Speaker 2: Well, I'd love to know what exactly has been happening

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Speaker 2: in the negotiations there as to you know, what sort

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Speaker 2: of pole prices that's been promised, you know, whether any

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Speaker 2: sort of the profits are going to be staying in

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Speaker 2: the country. I Mean, one of the things it also

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Speaker 2: strikes me is that obviously they're going to be running

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Speaker 2: off the New Testament Ring network cable that's going to

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Speaker 2: come in. Otherwise, the few as we're sort of looking

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Speaker 2: at this as actually being in an I an AI

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Speaker 2: factory for the rest of New Zealand or something like this.

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Speaker 2: The the you know, the cables that go down south

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Speaker 2: from Auckland, and you know also, you know, anything that

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Speaker 2: sort of is international connectivity in New Zealand otherwise that

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Speaker 2: all sits in the North Island. And so building a

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Speaker 2: data center is putting things at the very very end

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Speaker 2: of a very long chain of cables that are all

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Speaker 2: sort of you know, reasonably susceptible to things like the

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Speaker 2: earthquake accidents for volcanic eruption sympots and pieces like that

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Speaker 2: that might give in the way. So you know, just

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Speaker 2: you know, from the connectivity perspective self and is not

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Speaker 2: normally a place we would be building a data center.

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Speaker 2: From the power perspective, it is. So my big question is, really,

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Speaker 2: you know, how many more of those can we afford

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Speaker 2: because you know, this, this this one thing that one's

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Speaker 2: going to really already shift literally the power balance in

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Speaker 2: the South Island quite a bit, because I mean this

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Speaker 2: is this is you know, you know, in terms of

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Speaker 2: a total power useless is about seventy percent of what

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Speaker 2: christ Church takes. So and then you can't simply will

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Speaker 2: in nearly at extra park consumers without running. I was

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Speaker 2: generating capacity at some point.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

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Speaker 2: All right?

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Speaker 1: Listen, appreciate your time very much, OLORX Spiedel, who's the

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Speaker 1: spidal who's the senior lecture at computer science? What is

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Speaker 1: interesting I'm reading in Australia this morning is they're running

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Speaker 1: into trouble around the world and consenting because there is

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Speaker 1: trouble every time a data center comes down. I'm not

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Speaker 1: against data centers, and it does go back to our

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Speaker 1: conversation we've had with the Prime Minister many times when

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Speaker 1: I've said, if we want to be the host of

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Speaker 1: data centers, how do we provide the power? And I

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Speaker 1: don't think we've even answered that question yet. But nevertheless,

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Speaker 1: they're running into a lot of trouble, particularly in America,

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Speaker 1: getting consent because towns have gone, oh yay data centers.

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Speaker 1: Then they arrive and then they the pricess I say,

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Speaker 1: of power goes through the roof. So consenting is becoming

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Speaker 1: a problem. So the story this morning, according to Elon

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Speaker 1: Musk and the Australian media is that they're looking to

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Speaker 1: build data centers in space. But there that's Elon. For

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Speaker 1: more from the mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news

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