A multi-client AIGF producing sub-second power swings of this magnitude is therefore actively increasing the system’s balancing costs, not merely underutilising its connection
This is a key point that I haven’t seen expressed in any discussions of European data Centre build out yet. really good to actually see it named.
The multi-client scenario assumes a fragmented user base of enterprises, SMEs, public institutions and research organisations with heterogeneous, largely inference-driven workloads. 123 The paper concludes that given Europe’s provider landscape and user base, the anchor customer scenario is improbable and the multi-client scenario is far more realistic. This chapter takes that conclusion as its starting point. The following subsections show how a multi-client AIGF structure sharpens three bottlenecks—the utilisation gap and its energy costs, load variability and system-level impacts, and scheduling complexity—and contrast these outcomes with the anchor customer model to illustrate what the same GPU hardware would look like under a different use case.
Maybe this represents the way to standardise on making demand more amenable to to flexibility, as AIGF presumably would have some pricing power if they are offering access at subsidised rates.