Energy consumption by data centers is still low in Brazil, says Scala

The growing demand for electricity from technology giants to process billions of data in microseconds has been highlighted by the electricity sector as one of the possible solutions to absorb the surplus energy available in Brazil. Despite the accelerated advancement of data centers, mainly driven by artificial intelligence, the energy director at Scala Data Centers, Fábio Yanaguita, assesses that consumption in this segment is still low in Brazil.

In an interview with CNN Infra's Alta Voltagem program, Yanaguita stated that the estimated installed capacity of data centers in Brazil is currently between 800 megawatts (MW) and 1 gigawatt (GW), although actual consumption is lower.

"The installed capacity of data centers in Brazil is not public data, but we estimate something around 800 MW to 1 GW. This does not consume 100% of the capacity. Let's guess that it consumes around 600 MW. This is less than 1% of the country's load", he stated.

According to him, even in a scenario of strong expansion of the sector, the impact would still be relatively small given the size of the national electricity system. In the executive's calculations, if the market quadrupled in size, consumption would reach, at most, 2% of the country's load, which could represent around 1% growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

This opens up room for growth in the sector, which seeks renewable energy, reliability and transmission network availability. Although Brazil meets most of these requirements, Yanaguita adds that Brazil is a country that still needs to prove itself to attract these infrastructures.

The assessment takes place at a time when Brazil is looking for alternatives to increase electricity consumption and reduce structural waste resulting from oversupply of generation, especially after strong investments in renewable sources, such as solar and wind.

The advancement of data centers in the interior of São Paulo is already beginning to change CPFL Energia's electricity consumption profile. In a recent interview with CNN, the company's CEO, Gustavo Estrella said that demand in this segment grew 24% between 2025 and 2026, driven mainly by the installation of structures focused on artificial intelligence and cloud computing services in the Greater Campinas region.

Growth follows the global explosion in digital demand. Applications such as cryptocurrencies, cloud gaming, virtual reality, blockchain and training artificial intelligence models increasingly require more computational capacity and, consequently, large volumes of electrical energy.

Yanaguita also highlighted that Brazil has a highly connected and digitalized society, which reinforces the potential for expanding technological infrastructure in the country.

Source: CNN