The surge of proposed data centers across Virginia is raising questions about whether the state’s power grid can keep up with demand.
Ali Mehrizi-Sani, professor and director of the Virginia Tech Power and Energy Center, said a single data center can use as much electricity as an entire town.
“Data centers have been growing in the amount of energy they use...We are talking about now data centers that easily can consume something like 50 megawatts...even higher than something like one gigawatt of power. To put this in perspective, the town of Blacksburg...the power that the town consumes is about 60 megawatts. So that means that a data center is going to consume as much power as a college town like Blacksburg,” Mehrizi-Sani said.
Appalachian Power Spokesperson George Porter echoed the urgency. “We’ve heard from PJM that Virginia’s gonna pretty much double the demand...a lot of it’s coming from...data centers, but it’s also other large manufacturing companies that wanna relocate...because they want reliable power,” Porter said.
Porter said upgrades are already underway. “We definitely have to make those upgrades...One of them is the Valley Link Project, where we partnered with Dominion and First Energy to build a 765 line from Campbell County up to Cold Pepper County...it’s a Virginia problem...we’re all coming together to try to figure out ways to fix this problem.”
On renewable energy, Porter added, “Some companies are gonna ask for 80% renewable, some are gonna ask for 20% renewable...we have the early process for the small modular reactor...we know that if we continue to build out...we’re gonna have to try to figure out a way to supply the generation for the power that’s needed.”
Porter also addressed energy costs. “That’s one of the largest misinformation...having these large customers on our grid only helps our residential customers...if you bring in a large company...one of those companies, such as a data center, has agreed to pay for 30% of that. Then now everyone’s cost goes down.”
Mehrizi-Sani highlighted technical challenges. “A bigger concern is the transmission...The interconnection processes, these studies, they typically take about 18 months to two years...there is a mismatch between the timeline that the data centers want to come online and how fast...these studies can be done so they can reliably connect to the grid.”
Both experts agreed that Virginia’s power infrastructure must adapt. “Yes, of course we are looking at the power demand and the stress on the power system...there are other infrastructure needs...water resources...communication infrastructure...workforce...we need to make sure that the workforce that we train are sufficiently knowledgeable about these new loads,” Mehrizi-Sani said.
Despite the challenges, both remain confident Virginia can continue as a hub for data centers. “I do think so...the reasons that we had a lot of data centers to begin with in Virginia, like cheap power, proximity to the federal government, and proximity to internet connection points, those still exist...so to me it seems that we are still going to be able to support more data centers,” Mehrizi-Sani said.
Porter concluded, “There’s a hundred percent benefit for our communities from large companies that come here...if a large company is coming here and we have to build infrastructure...we still get the benefits of increased reliability for our local customers...they are being good neighbors.”