DEQ proposal aims to reduce strain on the electric grid
By Peter Cary Piedmont Journalism Foundation Updated Mar 7, 2023
Kyle Hart, of the National Parks Conservation Association, speaks during a protest Monday, Feb. 27 against a state DEQ proposal to allow data centers to run their diesel generators continually in times of stress on the electrical grid.
Doug Stroud
If data centers in Northern Virginia are allowed to run their generators 24/7 when the electric grid is struggling, citizens could experience an increase in toxic air pollution. And more.
That was the message from a mix of national and regional organizations who joined local citizens at a Virginia Department of Environmental Quality public hearing on Monday, Feb. 27. They were protesting a new DEQ proposal to let more than 100 data centers in Northern Virginia use their emergency generators to power themselves when the electrical grid is struggling.
Opponents called the proposal “reckless,” a “debacle” and a violation of the DEQ’s stated mission “to promote the health and well-being of the Commonwealth’s citizens, residents and visitors in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.”
Among the 41 speakers who opposed the proposal were representatives of the Sierra Club, the National Park Conservation Association, the Southern Environmental Law Center, Piedmont Environmental Council, Prince William Conservation Alliance, the Coalition to Protect Prince William County and Protect Fauquier.
Ann Bennett, land use chair of the Great Falls Group of the Sierra Club, castigated the DEQ for trying to change its rules without carefully studying the effects of the changes. “You can’t solve problems you don’t understand,” she said to cheers at a press conference just before the hearing.
At the public hearing, two individuals spoke in favor. One was Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, and the other was Mary Ann Ghadban, who is leading the charge among northern Prince William County landowners to sell their properties for the Prince William Digital Gateway, a 2,100-acre data center corridor proposed just north of the Manassas National Battlefield Park.
While the opposition focused mainly on the likely air pollution caused by the continuous running of diesel generators, others voiced concerns about residents living in lower-income areas downwind of the region’s data center clusters as well as the noise the generators would make. And for many, the proposal provided an opportunity to take swings at data centers in general.
Some speakers proposed sending warnings to nursing homes and schools when the generators would turn on to protect those with respiratory problems.
Others were outraged over the idea that the data centers could get paid to run their generators.
“That is like rewarding a pyromaniac for putting out the fire that they started,” said Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County.
Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, speaks at the DEQ hearing.
Doug Stroud
The Monday, Feb. 27 public hearing was the only one scheduled for the proposal – a variance to current law — that was posted on Jan. 25. The DEQ is taking written public comments on the proposal through March 14. DEQ policy analyst Karen Sabasteanski conducted the hearing alone.
DEQ policy analyst Karen Sabasteanski
Doug Stroud
Sabasteanski did not respond to the speakers’ remarks but said after the hearing that her department would review them and make recommendations, which would become public. She said since this was a variance and not a regulation, it would not fall under the purview of the DEQ’s air quality control board but would be handled by her department of air data analysis and planning.
“We need to consider these comments and the different impacts that they will have. So, we’re going to have to respond to the issues that people have brought up,” she said.
Michael Dowd, the director of DEQ’s Air and Renewable Energy Division, said in an email after the hearing, “We believe the proposed variance would result in very little, if any, impact to air quality, including with respect to air toxics.” Opponents stated that the diesel generators would release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, ozone and fine particulates.
The variance is written to apply from March through July 31 – this year only — which a DEQ notice cites as “a time of potentially acute stress” on the grid. Some of the speakers during the Feb. 27 public hearing, however, raised fears that it might be renewed every year – indeed, the variance says the grid may suffer shortages for data centers through 2025.
The proposal only affects data centers in Loudoun, Prince William and Fairfax counties. More than 100 data center complexes have been built in the region with ranks of generators standing by in case of a power outage. Currently the law limits their use – other than for testing – to periods of declared grid emergency and local power failures.
The proposed variance would allow the data centers to disconnect from the grid and run on generator power whenever a “load management alert” or a “local load relief warning” is declared by PJM Interconnect, which manages the grid in 14 states. This would allow “the data centers to continue to serve their customers, maintain the integrity of the internet and alleviate demand on the electric grid during times of stress,” the DEQ wrote in its proposal.
Current law limits most data center generators to 500 hours of operation per year, and their operation is severely limited during ozone season from May 1 through Sept. 30. The variance does not put a time limit on the running of the generators. It does require that data centers notify the DEQ when they turn on their generators and calculate the air pollution emitted while they are running.
But the DEQ provided no information on the effects of the proposal.
Julie Bolthouse, director of land use for the Piedmont Environmental Council, speaks against a proposal to lift data centers’ pollution permits so they can run their diesel-powered generators continually in times of stress on the electrical grid.
Doug Stroud
Julie Bolthouse, land use director for the Piedmont Environmental Council, located permits for 4,632 generators on 101 data center sites in the three counties. Sixteen of the sites held more than 100 generators.
Bolthouse had also researched the types of alerts that could trigger the use of generators. She said there were not many in 2018 and 2019, but by 2021 there were about 40, and in 2022 there were 80 – a number the PEC expects to increase as more data centers are built.
Morgan Butler, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville, said his research showed that PJM, the grid operator, had issued 15 separate local load relief warnings for “data center alley” in Ashburn totaling 140 hours just in May 2022.
But it is not clear how many generators would actually ramp up during such warnings or alerts. The variance would allow — but does not require — data centers to disconnect from the grid and run on generators in these cases. And the alerts are often limited to small parts of the northern Virginia grid.
Gainesville resident Roger Yackel speaks in opposition to allowing data centers to run their diesel-powered generators continuously during times of stress on the electrical grid.
Doug Stroud
Several citizens and group leaders said they were enraged by evidence that the data centers would be paid to disconnect from the grid. The DEQ’s Dowd said after the meeting that he did not believe this was the case.
But the PEC’s Director of Communications Bri West, pointed to PJM’s voluntary “Demand Response” program that compensates customers for agreeing to cut their power need when the reliability of the grid is threatened. Participants receive payments from PJM’s Curtailment Service Providers, PJM’s website says.
Kam Tower, an account executive with CPower, which is Virginia’s curtailment service provider, said it seemed likely to him that a data center could join the program and be compensated if it agreed to reduce its grid usage when the alerts went out.
Many of the speakers said they consider the proposed variance a gift to data centers and the internet they support without considering that it is the data centers, with their huge power draw, that largely are responsible for the looming shortages in the first place.
They said the answer is not to give data centers more leeway but rather to cut back or stop their proliferation.
Karen Sheehan speaks at the DEQ hearing on data center generator permits.
Doug Stroud
Karen Sheehan, director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, said she found everything about the proposal wrong.
“You want to waive these data centers and enable them to pollute my air, my daughter’s air, my granddaughter’s air and all of my neighbors’ air because of the internet,” she said. “This is outrageous; absolutely outrageous. It is dangerous.”