Data center demand doubles power forecast

A year ago, the operator of the Mid-Atlantic grid asked its utilities to predict how much energy data centers will demand in the future. The responses sent shock waves through the power community.

Last week the utilities updated their predictions: They were nearly double what they predicted only one year earlier.

Philip Sussler, who monitors grid load at the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, called the new projections "alarming."

"If all those megawatts get added to the system — in five years we can't possibly get enough new generation to meet that — you're going to face outages,” he said. 

The Independent Market Monitor — which tracks the regional grid operator and reports to its board — agreed. On Oct. 14, it told PJM Interconnection, “The current supply of capacity in PJM is not adequate to meet the demand from large data center loads and will not be adequate in the foreseeable future.”

PJM noted that the latest numbers are estimates, and have yet to be run through the organization’s review committee, which in the past has trimmed such projections back a bit. Still, even if the predictions are cut by 10%, they will present Mid-Atlantic utilities with a seemingly impossible task.

In the Dominion Zone, where Dominion Energy operates the transmission lines for itself and three electric cooperatives, Dominion’s data centers would add about 9 more gigawatts of demand in 10 years. NOVEC’s would also add 9 gigawatts. Rappahannock Electric’s would add nearly 5 gigawatts. (Currently, all of Rappahannock’s customers use 1 gigawatt.)  Old Dominion Electric Cooperative would add 1 gigawatt. A gigawatt of electricity can power 800,000 homes, or a small city.

So in 10 years, data centers would cause the power load in the Dominion Zone to double, from about 23 to 47 gigawatts.

With AEP Ohio adding 18 gigawatts, ComEd near Chicago adding 11, PPL Electric in Pennsylvania adding 15, and other Mid-Atlantic utilities adding more, the Mid-Atlantic zone will experience an added 98.6 gigawatts of data center load. Right now, the grid produces about 165 gigawatts of usable power, and last summer the grid used nearly all of that, putting the region on the cusp of blackouts.

Since it seems impossible to build enough generation, grid operators are ginning up ideas to cut the load, including:

• Telling data centers they can connect to the grid if they agree power companies can shut them off when the grid is too stressed — such as on the hottest days of summer.

• Creating a hookup queue, where data centers can be connected only if they will not overstress the grid.

• Telling data centers that, if they want to be connected, they must bring their own generation — either on their site or by building off-site generation equal to their needs and connected to the grid.

• Create better “demand response” initiatives. In demand response programs, power users — businesses, schools, residents — are paid if they cut back their power when told to do so.

• Have data centers build or contract for private generation and not connect to the grid at all.

Of course, one possibility is that the latest projections never become real. The increasingly higher costs of power, resistance from residents, slowdowns in supply chains, and years of delays for hookups could cause a slowdown in building data centers in Virginia, and perhaps in the Mid-Atlantic.

Because of that possibility, Sussler’s office has another fear: That utilities build generation and transmission lines to deal with projected demand, but the demand never comes.

Stan Blackwell, vice president of Dominion Energy, said that, during any one year, actual load for data centers runs about 50% of the full amount the centers have contracted for.

Still, Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, blames much of the future load problem on the utilities, which keep signing contracts to provide power to the data centers.

“That's what I get upset about,” he said. ”It's like these numbers are so astronomical, how can they possibly be committing to provide that amount of power? They don't have any idea.”

Reach Peter Cary at pcary@fauquier.com