Russia's data centres and crypto mines add a quarter more grid power in nine months

The installed capacity of data centres and cryptocurrency mining facilities connected to Russia's power grid rose by 24.4% in the first nine months of 2026 to 5.4GW, TASS reported on November 6, citing the System Operator, the grid dispatcher, as relayed by Kommersant.

As of September 30 the total capacity of energy-intensive computing facilities on the grid stood at 5,380MW, after 1,055MW of new capacity was connected since the start of the year. That pace puts the sector on course to match last year's expansion: the System Operator said in January that connected capacity had grown by about a third in 2025, from roughly 3GW to about 4GW, according to TASS reports at the time. Nine months of 24.4% growth annualises to a similar rate.

The weight of these consumers in the national balance is growing as fast. The share of data centres in Russia's total electricity consumption nearly doubled in three years, from 1.4% in 2022 to 2% in 2025, the System Operator said. It expects the figure to reach 15.3GW within the next five years, TASS reported, close to three times today's level.

Most of that load is not the cloud computing and AI servers that officials promote. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in a letter in March that of 4.5GW of connected data centre capacity, 2.7GW was used by cryptocurrency mining, and that mining could more than double to 12.7GW by 2030 while conventional data centres added at least 2.5GW. Commercial data centres proper are a fraction of the total: the Association of Data Centre Industry Participants put their capacity at 990.6MW at the end of 2025, up 18%, and forecasts 10-12% growth this year to about 1.1GW.