New filing shows electricity demand would be flat without the industry:
Ever since data centers started spreading across the Virginia landscape like an invasive pest, one important question has remained unanswered: How much does the industry's insatiable demand for energy impact other utility customers? Under pressure from the SCC [Virginia State Corporation Commission], this month Dominion Energy Virginia finally provided the answer we feared: Ordinary Virginia customers are subsidizing Big Tech with both their money and their health.
Dominion previously hid data centers among the rest of its customer base, making it impossible to figure out if residents were paying more than their fair share of the costs of building new generation and transmission lines. Worse, if data centers are the reason for burning more fossil fuels, then they are also responsible for residents being subjected to pollution that is supposed to be eliminated under the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). The VCEA calls for most coal plants in the state to be closed by the end of this year – which is not happening – and sets rigorous conditions before utilities can build any new fossil fuel plants.
[...] Even before the 2024 IRP was filed, though, the SCC directed the utility to file a supplement. It was obvious the IRP would project higher costs and increased use of fossil fuels. How much of that, the SCC demanded to know, is attributable to data centers?
A lot, as it turns out. Though Dominion continues to obfuscate key facts, the document it filed on November 15 shows future data center growth will drive up utility spending by about 20%. Dominion did not take the analysis further to show the effect on residential rates.
The filing also shows that but for new data centers, peak demand would actually decrease slightly over the next few years, from 17,353 MW this year to 17,280 MW in 2027, before beginning a gentle rise to 17,818 MW in 2034 and 18,608 MW in 2039.
In other words, without data centers, electricity use in Dominion territory would scarcely budge over the next decade. Indeed, the slight decrease over the next three years is especially interesting because near-term numbers tend to be the most reliable, with projections getting more speculative the further out you look.
Surprised? You're not alone. We've heard for years that electric vehicles and building electrification will drive large increases in energy demand. When Dominion talks about the challenges of load growth, it cites these factors along with data centers, suggesting that ordinary people are part of the problem. We're not.
[...] In addition to showing what the energy mix might look like without data centers, the SCC directed Dominion to identify which of its approximately 200 planned transmission projects were needed solely because of data centers. The 4-page table in Dominion's supplemental filing reveals that about half of the projects are solely data center-driven, with two or three dozen more serving a mix of customers that includes data centers. I tried to add up the numbers but lost track at a billion dollars' worth of projects needed solely for data centers – and I was still on the second page.
[...] Still, most of the data center growth lies ahead of us, as does Dominion's plans for new fossil fuel and nuclear generation. With state leaders avidly chasing more data centers in the name of economic development, ordinary Virginians are left to watch the assault on their energy supply, their water, and their environment and wonder: Is anyone going to fix this?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday November 30, @03:14PM (2 children)
And that would bad how?
It's like saying demand for tobacco would stagnate without smokers: everybody other than the tobacco industry should be pleased.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crm114 on Saturday November 30, @03:37PM
Wow.
I was trying to come up with an analogy, but you nailed it.
As a native of North Carolina - when they banned smoking in restaurants in the state I was living in at the time, I turned on the news and it was "THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!" - I'm uh... whuh? Then realized I was watching satellite TV from Raliegh, NC. (For non-americans - Winston-Salem, Raleigh, Reynolds... those are actually place names)
We move all our compute to "the cloud" and ... surprise .... "the cloud" needs electricity... and WOW! the buildings those "cloud things" need to be kept cool, which requires more electricity.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aafcac on Saturday November 30, @04:03PM
Because a bunch of that use is stupid BS like targeting ads to the visitors rather than based on the page content and there's a bunch more supporting IOT which didn't need to be smart in the first place.
Still it is good that the rest of our use is relatively flat.
(Score: 4, Informative) by looorg on Saturday November 30, @05:22PM (5 children)
I hope they pay their own electricity bill. Sure they probably got massive tax cuts and excellent deals for building the center in the first place. So the issue might not be so much the cost of said data-centers. The issue is more that all politicians gets completely bamboozled when the deal is made. They think that data-centers will somehow generate a lot of jobs. They don't. They never do. There is a small construction spike, usually not by people that live in the area to construct it. Then once it's up another group of people from the outside comes in and sets up the equipment and finally when it's done they might at best employ a handful of people that do physical things there. The rest of the jobs it generated are remote jobs. Where they maybe once in a while fly in and do things on site.
So data-centers just doesn't seem to generate a lot of revenue for the location it's in or taxable income for people that work there, cause there just are not a lot of those people. I'm sure they make bank for the companies someplace far far away. But not locally. It's at best some minor running costs and one time fees for the land, also probably a small sum cause the locals got bamboozled.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday November 30, @06:55PM
I bet they do ... but purchased from the glorious commodities free market [soylentnews.org], my free market competitor in capital.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday November 30, @07:03PM (3 children)
Holy crap, I was just being snarky [datacenterfrontier.com], but in retrospect, it totally makes sense that power consumers on the scale of large data centers wouldn't have to muscle their way to the power retail counter among the unwashed masses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01, @12:19AM (2 children)
Didn't follow your link, but data centers sound like perfect electric utility customers -- nice steady 24/7 power demand. If there are any peaks, they are soft, as people get to work in the morning, trends like that.
The customers that really get socked are the ones that have big intermittent demands -- near me is a test lab with a transsonic wind tunnel that uses 20+ megawatts when it's running around sonic speed (25,000 hp in motors + various inefficiencies). They have to call the generating plant and have another turbine (or whatever) spun up before they can start the tunnel. I think the "demand rate" surcharge more than doubles their cost of electricity.
Google found this page with a sample calculation, https://www.we-energies.com/payment-bill/demand-charges [we-energies.com] Company B with higher demand-to-average ratio pays more for the demand charge than for their basic power supply and delivery rate.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday December 01, @01:06AM
I think they connect to the utility's grid, but if I understand the link correctly, they buy directly from electricity commodities auctions.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 01, @04:07PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DrkShadow on Sunday December 01, @12:01AM (3 children)
California has a law: taxes are paid where the work is performed. If an actor lives in Vegas, and makes a movie in California, their pay is taxed in California.
Many places have similar: if you live in foreign countries, the one that you stay in for more than six months collects your taxes. Some of them (Japan?) have it: whatever you make while you're there is taxed. It's _where the work is performed_.
Virginia et al. could/should switch to this paradigm: AWS bills EC2 compute at $x. They keep pretty nifty and complete records of how much compute time is paid for in Virginia. Then, virginia knows exactly how much paid work is happening in Virginia. Even if it's just "sales tax", the state, or at least the county, should be able to get a cut of that. (If nothing else, they could tax it as an export.) At least, if the gov. didn't completely cave and give the world's largest organization a perpetual tax-free credit to erect and operate a datacenter in their region. (They wouldn't do that. Would they?...)
It would completely make up for losses due to not having paid jobs in the datacenter areas.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 01, @04:04PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01, @09:55PM (1 child)
No, not really [vedp.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 02, @03:40AM