So much of what we do every day involves a data centre. Shopping online, streaming TV shows, reading this story – they all need data to be stored and readily available.

The immediacy and convenience of those services is great, but that comes at a cost.

Data centres need huge amounts of electricity to keep them going – a large facility will use as much electricity as a medium-sized town.

The situation is particularly acute in Ireland, where a relatively small electricity grid is hosting a ballooning number of data centres.

More than 20 of these are in Dublin where Microsoft and Amazon have built very large sites.

Altogether the nation hosts 75 data centres with 11 more under construction and, according to energy consultants Baringa, they could take up 27% of the national electricity output by 2029.

That alarming demand for electricity has forced the Irish government to take action.

Sustainability is now a pre-condition of approval for new data centres with the government stating that “new-build data centres must be able to flexibly reduce power consumption”.

technology is being deployed in the hope of making data centres less of a burden on the power grid.

A new facility opened at Grange Castle on the outskirts of Dublin, has its connection to the electricity grid managed by software from the firm Eaton in conjunction with energy giant Enel.

If the wider electricity grid is under stress, the electricity to the data centre is shut off and backup systems immediately kick in.

All data centres operate sophisticated standby systems that keep them running in case of any electricity outage.

The first line of this defence is Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) devices. These are effectively sophisticated batteries that cut right in the split second they’re needed and run for enough time to allow a diesel generator to kick in or for mains power to be restored.

At Grange Castle, Eaton’s UPS intervenes and frees up the power on the grid when the grid’s electrical frequency, measured in hertz, fluctuates in a way that indicates it is under stress.

This might be when power from unstable sources, such as Ireland’s vast wind farms, dips.

Many data centres already remove demand from the grid for a pre-defined period using established technology from companies such as Schneider Electric and Vertiv.

But the Grange Castle arrangement is claimed to be the first time a live, dynamic relationship has been established between a data centre and a national grid.