Data center fire at Pangyo foretold by excessive power usage and data overload

[Photo by Park Hyung-ki]

A sharp increase in electricity consumption, data overload, and community rejection of data centers for backup all would have contributed to the buildup of a fire at SK C&C¡¯s Pangyo data center that wrecked the system of KakaoTalk, a messenger app used by most Koreans.

The fire broke out at the data center housing Kakao servers over the weekend, and fire authorities tentatively concluded that batteries inside the building¡¯s underground electricity room caused the fire.

Data submitted to Rep. Rho Yong-ho of the ruling People Power Party from KEPCO showed that electricity used by the data center located in Seongnam, Gyeonggi, home to many IT companies, increased by 33 percent from 96.4GWh in 2020 to 128GWh in 2021. The increase is more than three times the national average increase of 10 percent, suggesting the excessive power usage was one of the distant causes of the fire.

The majority 58.9 percent or 86 out of 146 data centers nationwide are concentrated in the metropolitan area, including Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon whose power use made up 74.5 percent as of 2021.

The concentration of data centers in the metropolitan area owes to community NIMBY-ism. Naver once chose Yongin City as a strong candidate location to build its new data center, but the plan was canceled due to opposition from residents.

The power consumption of the top 10 out of 146 data centers represents 40 percent of the total, raising the need for data center redundancy for data backup.

Of the top 10 power consuming data centers, only one is located in Gangwon Province, and the remaining nine are in Seoul and Gyeonggi.

Data centers nationwide spent 11,000GWh of power or more than 1 trillion won ($701 million) for three years. The ruling party argues that Seoul consumes 4,300GWh of electricity and Gyeonggi 3,600GWh, raising the need for power efficiency improvement at the national level.

As the role of data centers is increasing in the daily life of citizens, data center redundancy is needed to prepare for potential emergency situations, said Rep. Rho Yong-ho, adding that it is necessary to consider ways to locate and manage data centers in areas where it is easy to provide a stable power supply and cool heat.

[¨Ï Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]