Nscale has been told that an electricity supply will not be available in time for it to open its much-anticipated site in Essex next year, according to a report by The Telegraph.

The company is understood to be looking for ways to power the site. It is reportedly in discussions with Bloom Energy, a US company that designs and manufactures solid oxide fuel cells that independently produce electricity on-site for data centre power generation.

Ncale has secured millions of funding to develop AI data centres and is supported by the world’s most valuable company, Nvidia. Its data centre site in Loughton, Essex was announced by outgoing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during US President Donald Trump’s UK state visit last year. Microsoft is expected to be the anchor tenant of the data centre.

It was reported recently that the UK government reportedly urged the approval of the data centre site, despite local council objections. Lord Stockwood reportedly wrote to the council’s chief executive, Andrew Small – a move that was considered highly unusual – in November, to “emphasise [the government’s] strong support” for the project, according to planning documents.

With this planning permission, Nscale said it had 90MW of power supply in the pipeline. The site was initially supposed to go online this year, but it was delayed to 2027, and now it seems the power supply won’t be ready in time.

This could come as a blow to both the UK, which was relying on the site to scale its AI efforts, and Nscale, which could face financial penalties.

It comes as the grid connection request backlog continues in the UK, with data centres starting to turn to sources of power like gas rather than waiting to be hooked up to electricity. UK grids are so congested on account of a mismatch between rapidly growing renewable energy infrastructure and ageing transmission infrastructure.

Grid delays have resulted in some projects being delayed by up to a decade or more, before an electricity supply is guaranteed. This, alongside rising energy prices, has inevitably led to concerns over whether the UK can successfully support the data centre industry.

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