Someone tell Bowen: data centres need stable 24/7 power

Friday 7 August 2026

AI data centres require continuous, stable 24/7 power, and the entire facility is engineered around that assumption. Even a brief outage of a few seconds can crash running training jobs, corrupt model checkpoints, or take thousands of GPUs offline.

GPUs and accelerators draw extremely high, constant loads (often 30–60 MW for a large site), making stable baseload power mandatory.

Cooling systems must also run continuously. If power drops, thermal runaway can damage hardware within minutes.

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About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.