Data centres hide water and power figures, Microsoft forecasts grid risk, US investment lags

That is the central finding of a year-long study by Lighthouse Report with Trouw and other European media. The reporters filed freedom of information requests across several countries and came away empty-handed. The European Energy Efficiency Directive requires data centres with at least 500 kilowatts of installed capacity to report energy and water use. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Datacenter Association counted 186 commercial sites of that size at the end of last year. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency, known as RVO, has data on only 104 of them.

Figures exist for the electricity consumption of 44 centres and the water use of 47. RVO told Trouw it holds more data on some sites but did not release it.

The gap matters. Dutch data centres used 5.1 billion kilowatt-hours in 2024, according to Statistics Netherlands. That is 4.6 percent of national electricity consumption, nearly double the level five years earlier. Grid operator TenneT expects data centres to account for 10 to 15 percent of Dutch electricity by 2030. A shortage of grid capacity already keeps businesses, institutions and housing projects on waiting lists. Data released by RVO this summer showed Microsoft’s largest Dutch data centre alone consumes 1 percent of national electricity. Google runs two large data centres in the country and does not disclose comparable figures.

A forecasting pipeline for the grid

On the same day, Microsoft Research published work that tries to address a different risk to transmission networks: space weather. A summer intern built a machine learning pipeline that forecasts geomagnetic disturbance risk for 66,935 substations in the continental United States. It combines solar-wind observations, forecasts of the Auroral Electrojet and Disturbance Storm Time indices, physics-informed constraints, local geological conductivity and grid infrastructure data. According to the Microsoft Research blog, the system detected nearly 80 percent of major space-weather events during its evaluation period. It can warn operators 30 to 60 minutes before a specific risk appears.

The May 2024 geomagnetic storm is the reference case. It pushed auroras far beyond their usual range and degraded GPS accuracy. The blog notes that regions with resistive bedrock can see stronger geomagnetically induced currents than areas with more conductive geology. That is why a single national forecast is not enough.

Neither project is a substitute for building. The International Renewable Energy Agency has said electricity must reach 35 percent of global energy use by 2035, with grid investment doubling to $1 trillion a year. OilPrice.com reported that target on 30 September and asked whether the world can hit it. The article did not offer a firm answer. The arithmetic is set against a background of strained capacity in several markets.

Vehicles and the demand they add

Electrification of transport is one of the loads that grids must absorb. CleanTechnica reported on 30 September that the United States stood at 5.9 percent battery-electric share in the first half of 2026, against 45 percent in China in August and 26 percent in Europe in July. The same piece noted that Canada is opening itself to Chinese EV imports while the US maintains protectionist barriers, and that Ford pulled the F-150 Lightning from the US market.

New electric models keep arriving elsewhere. JLR announced the Range Rover Sport Electric on 29 September, with a 118.5-kilowatt-hour battery and an 800-volt architecture. WIRED reported a starting price of £109,810 with no US pricing, and claimed WLTP range of up to 374 miles. InsideEVs put the WLTP figure at 378 miles and said a company representative confirmed the model is not coming to the United States as a 2027 model. Both outlets agree on 350-kilowatt DC charging and a 10-to-80 percent session in 22 minutes. The discrepancy in range is a reminder that WLTP numbers vary by configuration.

On the same day, Toyota released video of a stunt at Bentwaters airfield in Suffolk. A crane hoisted a 1,675-pound caravan 30 feet and dropped it onto the roof of a Hilux BEV. Electrek reported that the electric pickup drove off after the impact. The truck uses a 59.2-kilowatt-hour battery, a dual-motor all-wheel-drive setup with 278 horsepower and a WLTP range of up to 160 miles. It starts at £42,170 before VAT in the UK.

Tesla, meanwhile, was granted a patent for an electric fan car. Electrek reported on 29 September that US 12,746,987 B1 covers four ducted fans in the rear diffuser, fed by an underbody inlet, intended to produce downforce independent of vehicle speed. The drawings show a Model S, which Tesla stopped building in April. The patent was filed in January 2024 and traces back to a provisional application from January 2023.

Money and skills

Investment is moving on the political side too. Seeking Alpha reported on 30 September, citing Bloomberg, that President Donald Trump was expected to unveil roughly $200 billion in South Korean investments in the United States, including about $54 billion tied to the long-delayed Alaska LNG project. Shipbuilding, energy infrastructure and nuclear plants are among the targets. The report is based on people familiar with the discussions, so the final composition may change.

Who builds and maintains all this is a separate question. Asterisk Magazine published a long essay on 30 September arguing that the popular case for trades jobs over college is weaker than its advocates suggest. It cites research finding substantial income effects from college graduation, notes that the college wage premium grew from the 1970s until the 2000s, and points out that the average net price for public in-state tuition and fees was under $2,500 per year in 2024 and has been declining since 2016. The essay is an argument, not a dataset, but it is a useful counterweight to recruitment pitches.

Aviation added a different kind of grid-adjacent story. The Aviation Herald reported on 30 September that a Flydubai MAX 8 near Tabuk was the scene of a fight in the cockpit, with the first officer under investigation for a suspected suicide attempt. That item has no direct link to electricity investment, but it appeared in the same 72-hour window and shows how wide the dossier runs.

What ties the newest material together is disclosure and forecasting. The Dutch data centre study shows that operators are not volunteering the numbers regulators need. Microsoft’s pipeline shows that some risks can be predicted with half an hour of warning. Between those two poles sits the question that neither answers: who pays for the grid that both assume.