By Ashley Tang
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Malaysia's data centres are consuming more power as temperatures rise, leaving a 9 gigawatt gas-fired capacity gap for the government to fill by 2032, officials said on Tuesday.
The share of data centres in overall power consumption surged to a record 9.3% in the second week of August, compared with an average of 7% this year, Energy Commission CEO Siti Safinah Salleh said.
"With the hotter weather, the cooling system requires a lot more energy," she said.
Data centres could account for as much as 31% of peninsular Malaysia's power demand by 2035, said Zaharin Zulkifli, deputy director for economic statistics and research at the Energy Commission.
As Malaysia, the region's fastest-growing data centre hub, gradually phases out coal-fired power, the nation of about 35 million people will have to augment its gas-fired capacity by 9 GW by 2032, economy minister Akmal Nasir said.
The Southeast Asian country plans to retire the last of its coal-fired power plants by 2044, Akmal told reporters at an Energy Commission conference.
Malaysia is attracting billions of dollars in investments from major global tech firms including Amazon and Microsoft, leveraging its domestic gas reserves to address rising power demand this year and buck a regional decline in gas-fired generation as the Iran war chokes liquefied natural gas imports.
But with no additional gas-fired power expected to come online this year and next, Malaysia will "optimise" its current fleet to address rising demand until the end of 2027, Siti said, without providing further details.
The energy commission did not anticipate hot weather persisting longer than early September, which she said resulted in higher power use, she said.
"Because of the hot weather, our hydro dams are also at very low levels."
Still, Malaysia does not face power shortages in the near future due to rising data centre deployments, said Gary Goh, senior manager for business development at Sprint DC Consulting.
"The demand surge is entirely within grid planning parameters and will continue to ramp predictably," Goh said.
(Reporting by Ashley Tang; Writing by Sudarshan Varadhan and Rozanna Latiff; Editing by John Mair and Michael Perry)
