Data center group asks DEQ to withdraw policy change proposal for backup generators | News | loudountimes.com
By Coy Ferrell cferrell@loudountimes.com March 30, 2023
The newest addition to CloudHQ’s Ashburn data center campus is seen under construction March 20, 2023 from Waxpool Road.
Times-Mirror/Coy Ferrell
Last year, Dominion Energy revealed that it had failed to upgrade its electric transmission infrastructure quickly enough to keep up with future demand for power data centers in eastern Loudoun County.
In January, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality proposed a stopgap measure, a temporary regulatory “variance” that would have allowed data centers to use their emergency-backup generators in limited, non-emergency situations to take pressure off the grid while Dominion works to build more transmission infrastructure.
Now, a trade group representing the world’s largest data center operators is asking the DEQ to withdraw the proposal altogether, arguing that it is impractical, unneeded and that it may violate federal regulations.
“[T]here are important and unresolved technical, federal regulatory, and operational challenges with this [proposal],” Data Center Coalition President Josh Levi wrote in a March 27 letter to the DEQ, which the Times-Mirror obtained through a public-record request. “Due to these issues, no DCC member has indicated they would use the variance,” he added.
The DEQ will make a decision on the proposal after the April 21 public comment deadline. DEQ Director Mike Rolband told the Times-Mirror that he could not comment on a pending policy matter that was still in the public comment phase.
Data centers house the computer servers through which the internet operates, and most the world’s internet relies on data centers in Northern Virginia – especially in eastern Loudoun County. The facilities’ vital role in the global economy makes it vital for data center operators to build redundancy into their power supply. They typically have on-site diesel generators to keep their servers running in the event of a power outage – there are more than 4,000 of those generators in Loudoun County alone, according to the DEQ. (The industry is testing less noxious forms of emergency backup power, like a pilot lithium-ion battery backup system built recently by Google for a data center in Belgium.)
Currently, Virginia regulations allow data centers to use those generators only in the event of a power outage, which is very rare, or for periodic testing. The temporary variance would be in effect through July of this year and allow regional grid coordinator PJM Interconnection to request that some data centers switch to their backup generators if overall demand for electricity put a severe strain on the grid.
The DEQ’s variance “would authorize the data centers’ on-site generators to operate during times that fall short of a PJM declared emergency but when transmission constraints and strain on the electric grid nevertheless would be acute, thereby allowing the data centers to continue to serve their customers, maintain the integrity of internet, and alleviate demand on the electric grid during periods of stress. This order is being issued as a precautionary and redundant measure in the event that transmission constraints have a negative impact in the area.”
But the agency emphasized, even before the March 27 DCC letter, that it did not anticipate that the generators would ever need to be used in these non-emergency situations. “Since data centers seldom have needed to use their on-site generators for emergency purposes, this action is a purely precautionary measure to prevent an emergency that affects wider areas. We do not anticipate that any data center will need to use this variance,” DEQ proposal says.
Even if the variance was necessary, Levi’s letter noted that the coalition is unaware of any Dominion program that would provide a framework for when and how data centers should go off the main grid temporarily, programs that exist in some other areas. He emphasized that DCC members are willing to work with state regulators and utility companies to develop a systemic program to “address the transmission constraint in Eastern Loudoun County and ensure a strong, resilient, and reliable grid.”
Data centers require significant amounts of electricity, accounting for 2% of all energy consumption in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Their power consumption is a much higher percentage in Virginia, which is home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world.
Data center operators emphasize that the hyper-scale model increasingly used by major players in the industry like Amazon, Microsoft and Google is much more energy-efficient than housing those servers in smaller facilities, and many operators have committed to working toward carbon-neutral energy usage through either direct use of renewable energy or by purchasing carbon offsets.
From the beginning, the DEQ proposal sparked fierce and organized opposition from regional lobbying groups and activists who have been critical of data centers in Northern Virginia in general; they argued that the variance would present dire health and environmental risks.
The DEQ originally proposed the variance for Fairfax and Prince William counties as well, but later revised the proposal to include only eastern Loudoun County, where Dominion had indicated its failure to plan improvements to the grid may cause constraints on its ability to deliver power to new data centers as it builds more infrastructure.
Coy Ferrell