“Dominion Energy has been racing to keep up with the extra demands for electricity brought by the rapidly expanding data center industry in Virginia, particularly in the eastern part of Loudoun County, where the bulk of the industry is concentrated.”
“…Meanwhile, more data center projects are under consideration in Northern Virginia, with residents who live near those sites fighting to stop the growth because of noise from their cooling system fans and the potential negative impact on their property values.”
“Those critics argue for regulations requiring the industry to reduce its electrical demand.”
“How many variances are in our future?” Bill Wright, part of a group of Prince William residents who’ve opposed a plan for a 2,100-acre data center complex in Gainesville, said at the DEQ public hearing. “If data centers are the source of the problem, the onus should be on them to provide a solution.”
Va. officials weigh letting Loudoun data centers use diesel backup power – The Washington Post
Here is a portion of the July 2022 report directly from PJM warning of cascading power outages in the region due to data center electricity demand: Dominion-Energy-Northern-Virginia-Area-Immediate-Need-071222.pdf (protectpwc.org)
- The Northern Virginia, Dulles Airport/Data Center area is experiencing very high concentrated load growth
- Reliability violations are observed in 2024, continue in 2025 even with supplemental upgrades, and into 2027
- 11 planned supplemental projects and 2 planned baseline upgrades are not sufficient to address the reliability needs in 2025
- Without further transmission upgrades, in 2024/25: The area will not have sufficient transmission capability under Gen Deliverability, N-1 and N-1-1 outage conditions in 2024 and beyond
Not only are Virginians burdened with paying for the costly transmission lines and substations for the data centers, sacrificing our properties, our cultural and natural resources — but now the very air we breathe is at risk, to ensure our lights can stay on.
Who is responsible for this out-of-control and egregious data center proliferation?
- Our local elected leaders, who are not asking the important questions and are simply adding millions more sq. feet of data centers outside the prescribed industrial areas
- Dominion Energy, our monopoly utility that keeps promising “if you build it” we will supply the power
- Our state representatives, unwilling to even pass a bill to study the impacts of data centers
- Our governor, who appears to be deaf, dumb, and blind as long as Amazon gives him a $35 billion dollar “bribe” to build MORE data centers in Virginia
At EVERY level, those in power are writing checks, which CITIZENS have to cover.
We say ENOUGH!
Please comment here at the DEQ website.
Or show up at the next public hearing at 11:00 AM on April 6: Conference Room, Northern Regional Office, 13901 Crown Court, Woodbridge VA.
Please write your BOCS and your Governor and tell them now is the time to acknowledge the facts and the science. Tell them this industry has an outsized footprint on our quality of life, and the negatives now outweigh any possible benefits.
PWC Board of Supervisors:
chair@pwcgov.org jlawson@pwcgov.org yvega@pwcgov.org abailey@pwcgov.org vsangry@pwcgov.org kboddye@pwcgov.org mfranklin@pwcgov.org bweir@pwcgov.org
*********************************************
Mid-Atlantic region could run out of power in 7 years: Report (cnbc.com)
Find more articles in News Coverage