Data Center Power Demand Almost Doubled in Virginia, Utility Says

The biggest utility in Virginia, home to the global hotspot Data Center Alley, saw demand from data centers in development almost double in the last half of 2024. From a report: Total data center power capacity under contract with Dominion Energy in Virginia, which includes projects from preliminary to advanced stages of development, increased to 40.2 gigawatts in December from 21.4 gigwatts in July, the company said on its earnings call Wednesday.

Demand for power is surging with the development of data centers and artificial intelligence, along with manufacturing and the increasing electrification of the economy. Northern Virginia, which has the biggest concentration of the facilities in the world, has earned the nickname of Data Center Alley.

The Devil Is Here in These Hills

[TwistedGreen]

100% coal powered, right? Anyone have an energy mix for this utility?

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[nevermindme]

You can get it for the region here. https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov] Solar and Wind total production and growth is lagging behind the rest of the USA.

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[stabiesoft]

I looked at the link. I was hoping for a dynamic display of at this moment in time mix is xyz. They sum it up over a day into MWH, which is far less useful. ERCOT shows multiple displays over time to show how at 3am wind is 10GW, solar is 0, gas is 40, coal is 5, nuke is 5 etc and then as the day marches on wind dies down to 5 solar ramps to 15 etc. My guess is if 20GW of load was added in 6 months it is all nat gas & coal to power it. I am unaware of any new nuke plants and those do not ramp up. The on

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[CubicleZombie]

Dominion does have a nuclear power plant. What percentage of the load that serves, I don't know.

As I heard from someone well versed in local land use policies, in Virginia, commercial power consumers don't have to pay to get new infrastructure. The power company just raises rates for everybody. And that is why Northern Virginia is the "Data Center Capital of the World". That and knowing how to grease the wheels. One of the board of supervisors for my town voted yes on an Amazon data center that nobody

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[kriston]

While there is some solar and a lot of coal, the vast majority is natural gas followed by nuclear.

https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]

AI sucks

[rsilvergun]

Yeah there's going to be some actual scientific uses for it and machine learning in general. But this big gold rush where giant data centers are getting belt left and right guzzling down power while forests burn is because of the ability to replace low level white collar workers and in some cases not so low level white collar workers.

It's bad enough to see people losing jobs to this crap without them also losing their access to electricity. Supply and demand baby supply and demand. This is going to increase the cost of electricity for us. And we are not going to build out enough to meet that demand. Look at Texas every time you turn around their grid is collapsing. I know people in Texas and when they have that big storm the data centers and industrial areas kept their power while people froze to death.

Re:AI sucks

[LDA6502]

"The underlying purpose of AI is to allow the wealthy to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth."

And we are paying the price of building our replacements through higher electricity bills, greater amounts of pollution, and general enshittification of the world.

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[Goddamnferret]

That's the reason I'm shooting myself in the foot and not forcing myself into AI skills/environments. Even if AI does some good, can I look at myself in the mirror at night and have a reply to "is it worth it?". I feel like I'd be joining a strip mining company, or an oil rig with no EPA oversight. I'd be helping more people use AI, enabling more people to use AI. I feel like I'm just as fucked up as any bottling company sending a bajillion plastic bottles out for people to drink and toss in the water, but

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[Darinbob]

The AI companies had better be charged full price. But I suspect that some naive politicians don't want to harm the golden goose and will try to get them sweetheart deals that screw over the citizens.

US Intelligence is ramping up

[BishopBerkeley]

Northern Virginia is the DC exurbs where a lot of DOD data facilities are located. Clearly, data collection and analysis is ramping up.

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[MacMann]

Northern Virginia is the DC exurbs where a lot of DOD data facilities are located. Clearly, data collection and analysis is ramping up.

In west Virginia is the TVA, and they produce electricity. If one government agency has what another government agency needs in such proximity then I'd think things could happen quickly in reaching some resolution. I don't know how many more hydroelectric dams can be built in that river system but the TVA can build more nuclear power plants, using the rivers as a heat sink and the dams for energy storage to even out peaks and valleys in electrical demand. The TVA already built hydroelectric energy storag

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[stabiesoft]

Hasn't TVA built every conceivable hydro plant already? I think probably. Hydro has been around long enough and is vastly cheaper that it was built out if it was feasible. I think pretty much the entire US river system has hydro where it is viable.

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[MachineShedFred]

To wit: we are actually tearing out dams on some river systems because the damage they do isn't worth the minor amount of electricity they make.

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[geekmux]

Northern Virginia is the DC exurbs where a lot of DOD data facilities are located. Clearly, data collection and analysis is ramping up.

Given what has been revealed in the last decade, they’re all DOD data facilities when you really think about it.

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[MachineShedFred]

It's also where AWS us-east-1 region is, as well as some Azure, Oracle, Google cloud stuff. They all want US government business, so they built their shit for government offerings as close to the government as practicable.

This is how the world ends

[ebunga]

This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with the power utilities stopping production because they went bankrupt because the datacenters went bankrupt because the AI companies using those datacenters went bankrupt because they had no useful product.

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[DarkOx]

The data centers are not going bankrupt. Especially not with all the cheap energy and subsidized infrastructure costs down state rate payers get to shoulder for them.

People will tire of chatbots and eventually figure out much less compute intensive NLP is more useful for identifying/search for useful content in works authored by actual intelligence, we will go back to much more traditional looking search application. I don't need the fourth grade book report, just give me the citations as response to my qu