Internet data centers are fueling drive to old power source: Coal. (Washington Post)
A helicopter hovers over the Gee family farm, the noisy rattle echoing inside their home in this rural part of West Virginia. It’s holding surveyors who are eyeing space for yet another power line next to the property — a line that will take electricity generated from coal plants in the state to address a drain on power driven by the world’s internet hub in Northern Virginia 35 miles away.
There, massive data centers with computers processing nearly 70 percent of global digital traffic are gobbling up electricity at a rate officials overseeing the power grid say is unsustainable unless two things happen: Several hundred miles of new transmission lines must be built, slicing through neighborhoods and farms in Virginia and three neighboring states. And antiquated coal-powered electricity plants that had been scheduled to go offline will need to keep running to fuel the increasing need for more power, undermining clean energy goals.
“It’s not right,” said Mary Gee, whose property already abuts two power lines that serve as conduits for electricity flowing towardthe biggest concentration of data centers — in Loudoun County, home to what’s known as Data Center Alley.“These power lines? They’re not for me and my family. I didn’t vote on this. And the data centers? That’s not in West Virginia. That’s a whole different state.”
The $5.2 billion effort has fueled a backlash against data centers through the region, prompting officials in Virginia to begin studying the deeper impacts of an industry they’ve long cultivated for the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue it brings to their communities.
Critics say it will force residents near the coal plants to continue living with toxic pollution, ironically to help a state — Virginia — that has fully embraced clean energy. And utility ratepayers in the affected areas will be forced to pay for the plan in the form of higher bills, those critics say.
But PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator, says the plan is necessary to maintain grid reliability amid a wave of fossil fuel plant closures in recent years, prompted by the nation’s transition to cleaner power.
Internet data centers are fueling drive to old power source: Coal
CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. — A helicopter hovers over the Gee family farm, the noisy rattle echoing inside their home in this rural part of West Virginia. It’s holding surveyors who are eyeing space for yet another power line next to the property — a line that will take electricity generated from coal plants in the state to address a drain on power driven by the world’s internet hub in Northern Virginia 35 miles away.
There, massive data centers with computers processing nearly 70 percent of global digital traffic are gobbling up electricity at a rate officials overseeing the power grid say is unsustainable unless two things happen: Several hundred miles of new transmission lines must be built, slicing through neighborhoods and farms in Virginia and three neighboring states. And antiquated coal-powered electricity plants that had been scheduled to go offline will need to keep running to fuel the increasing need for more power, undermining clean energy goals.
The $5.2 billion effort has fueled a backlash against data centers through the region, prompting officials in Virginia to begin studying the deeper impacts of an industry they’ve long cultivated for the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue it brings to their communities.
Critics say it will force residents near the coal plants to continue living with toxic pollution, ironically to help a state — Virginia — that has fully embraced clean energy. And utility ratepayers in the affected areas will be forced to pay for the plan in the form of higher bills, those critics say.
But PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator, says the plan is necessary to maintain grid reliability amid a wave of fossil fuel plant closures in recent years, prompted by the nation’s transition to cleaner power.
Power lines will be built across four states in a $5.2 billion effort that, relying on coal plants that were meant to be shuttered, is designed to keep the electric grid from failing amid spiking energy demands.
Cutting through farms and neighborhoods, the plan converges on Northern Virginia, where a growing data center industry will need enough extra energy to power 6 million homes by 2030.
With not enough of those green energy facilities connected to the grid yet, enough coal and natural gas energy to power 32 million homes is expected to be lost by 2030 at a time when the demand from the growing data center industry, electric vehicles and other new technology is on the rise, PJM says.
“The system is in a major transition right now, and it’s going to continue to evolve,” Ken Seiler, PJM’s senior vice president in charge of planning, said in a December stakeholders’ meeting about the effort to buy time for green energy to catch up. “And we’ll look for opportunities to do everything we can to keep the lights on as it goes through this transition.”
A need for power
Data centers that house thousands of computer servers and the cooling equipment needed for them to runhave been multiplying in Northern Virginia since the late 1990s, spreading from the industry’s historic base in Loudoun County to neighboring Prince William County and, recently, across the Potomac River into Maryland. There are nearly 300 data centers now in Virginia.
With Amazon Web Services pursuing a $35 billion data center expansion in Virginia, rural portions of the state are the industry’s newest target for development.
But data centers also consume massive amounts of energy.
One data center can require 50 times the electricity of a typical office building, according to the U.S.Department of Energy. Multiple-building data center complexes, which have become the norm, require as much as 14 to 20 times that amount.
The demand has strained utility companies, to the point where Dominion Energy in Virginia briefly warned in 2022 that it may not be able to keepup with the pace of the industry’s growth.
The utility — which has since accelerated plans for new power lines and substations to boost its electrical output — predicts that by 2035 the industry in Virginia will require 11,000 megawatts, nearly quadruple what it needed in 2022, or enough to power 8.8 million homes.
Thesmaller Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative recently told PJM that the more than 50 data centers it serves account for 59 percent of its energy demand. It expects to need to serve about 110 more data centers by July 2028.
Meanwhile, the amount of energy available is not growing quickly enough to meet that future demand. Coal plants have scaled down production or shut down altogether as the market transitions to green energy, hastened by laws in Maryland and Virginia mandating net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 and, for several other states in the region, by 2050.
Dominion is developing a 2,600-megawatt wind farm off Virginia Beach — the largest such project in U.S. waters — and the company recently gained state approval to build four solar projects.
But those projects won’t be ready in timeto absorb the projected gap in available energy.Opponents of PJM’s plan say it wouldn’t be necessary if more green energy had been connected to the grid faster, pointing to projects that were caught up in bureaucratic delays for five years or longer before they were connected.
A PJM spokesperson said the organization has recently sped up its approval process and is encouraging utility companies and federal and state officials to better incorporate renewable energy.
About 40,000 megawatts of green energy projects have been cleared for construction but are not being built because of issues related to financing or siting, the PJM spokesperson said.
Once more renewable energy is available, some of the power lines being built to address the energy gap may no longer be needed as the coal plants ultimately shut down, clean energy advocates say — though utility companies contend the extra capacity brought by the lines will always be useful.
“Their planning is just about maintaining the status quo,” Tom Rutigliano, a senior advocate for clean energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said about PJM. “They do nothing proactive about really trying to get a handle on the future and get ready for it.”
‘Holding on tight’ to coal
The smoke from two coal plants near West Virginia’s border with Pennsylvania billows over the city of Morgantown, adding a brownish tint to the air.
The owner of one of the Morgantown-area plants, Longview LLC, recently emerged from bankruptcy. After a restructuring, the facility is fully functioning, utilizing a solar farm to supplement its coal energy output.
The other two plants belong to the Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. utility, which had plans to significantly scale down operations there to meet a company goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by nearly a third over the next six years.
The FirstEnergy plants are among the state’s worst polluters, said Jim Kotcon, a West Virginia University plant pathology professor who oversees conservation efforts at the Sierra Club’s West Virginia chapter.
The Harrison plant pumped out a combined 12 million tons of coal pollutants like sulfur and nitrous oxides in 2023, more than any other fossil fuel plant in the state, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. The Fort Martin plant, which has been operating since the late 1960s, emitted the state’s highest levels of nitrous oxides in 2023, at 5,240 tons.
After PJM tapped the company to build a 36-mile-long portion of the planned power lines for $392 million, FirstEnergy announced in February that the company is abandoning a 2030 goal to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions because the two plants are crucial to maintaining grid reliability.
The news has sent FirstEnergy’s stock price up by 4 percent, to about $37 a share this week, and was greeted with jubilation by West Virginia’s coal industry.(Hadley Green/The Washington Post)
“We welcome this, without question, because it will increase the life of these plants and hundreds of thousands of mining jobs,” said Chris Hamilton, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. “We’re holding on tight to our coal plants.”
Since 2008, annual coal production in West Virginia has dipped by nearly half, to about 82 million tons, though the industry — which contributes about $5.5 billion to the state’s economy — has rebounded some due to an export market to Europe and Asia, Hamilton said.
Hamilton said his association will lobby hard for FirstEnergy’s portion of the PJM plan to gain state approval. The company said it will submit its application for its power line routes in mid-2025.
PJM asked the plants’ owner, Texas-based Talen Energy Corp., to keep them running through 2028 — with the yet-to-be determined cost of doing so passed on to ratepayers.
That would mean amending a 2018 federal court consent decree, in which Talen agreed to stop burning coal to settle a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club over Clean Water Act violations. The Sierra Club has rejected PJM’s calls to do so.
“We need a proactive plan that is consistent with the state’s clean energy goals,” said Josh Tulkin, director of the Sierra Club’s Maryland chapter, which has proposed an alternative plan to build a battery storage facility at the Brandon Shores site that would cut the time needed for the plants to operate.
A PJM spokesperson said the organization believes that such a facility wouldn’t provide enough reliable power and is not ruling out seeking a federal emergency order to keep the coal plants running.
With the matter still unresolved, nearby residents say they are anxious to see them closed.
“It’s been really challenging,” said John Garofolo, who lives in the Stoney Beach neighborhood community of townhouses and condominiums, where coal dust drifts into the neighborhood pool when the facilities are running. “We’re concerned about the air we’re breathing here.”
Sounding alarms
Keryn Newman, a Charles Town activist, has been sounding alarms in the small neighborhoods and farm communities along the path of the proposed power lines in West Virginia.
Because FirstEnergy prohibits any structure from interfering with a power line, building a new line along the right of way — which would be expanded to make room for the third line — would mean altering the character of residents’ properties, Newman said.
“It gobbles up space for play equipment for your kid, a pool or a barn,” she said. “And a well or septic system can’t be in the right of way.”
A FirstEnergy spokesperson said the company would compensate property owners for any land needed, with eminent domain proceedings a last resort if those property owners are unwilling to sell.
Pam and Gary Gearhart fought alongside Newman against the defeated 765-kilovolt line, which would have forced them to move a septic system near FirstEnergy’s easement. But when Newman showed up recently to their Harpers Ferry-area neighborhood to discuss the new PJM plan, the couple appeared unwilling to fight again.
Next door, another family had already decided to leave, the couple said, and was in the midst of loading furniture into a truck when Newman showed up.
“They’re just going to keep okaying data centers; there’s money in those things,” Pam Gearhart said about local governments in Virginia benefiting from the tax revenue. “Until they run out of land down there.”
In Loudoun County, where the data center industry’s encroachment into neighborhoods has fostered resentment, community groups are fighting a portion of the PJM plan that would build power lines through the mostly rural communities of western Loudoun.
The lines would damage the views offered by surrounding wineries and farms that contribute to Loudoun’s $4 billion tourism industry, those groups say.
Bill Hatch owns a winery that sits near the path of where PJM suggested one high-voltage line could go, though that route is still under review.
“This is going to be a scar for a long time,” Hatch said.
Reconsidering the benefits
Amid the backlash, local and state officials are reconsidering the data center industry’s benefits.
The Virginia General Assembly has launched a study that, among other things, will look at how the industry’s growth may affect energy resources and utility rates for state residents.
But that study has held up efforts to regulate the industry sooner, frustrating activists.
“We should not be subsidizing this industry for another minute, let alone another year,” Julie Bolthouse, director of land use at the Piedmont Environmental Council, chided a Senate committee that voted in February to table a bill that would force data center companies to pay more for new transmission lines.
Loudoun is moving to restrict where in the county data centers can be built. Up until recently, data centers have been allowed to be built without special approvals wherever office buildings are allowed.
But such action will do little to stem the worries of people like Mary and Richard Gee.
As it is, the two lines near their property produce an electromagnetic field strong enough to charge a garden fence with a light current of electricity, the couple said. When helicopters show up to survey the land for a third line, the family’s dog, Peaches, who is prone to seizures, goes into a barking frenzy.
An artist who focuses on natural landscapes, Mary Gee planned to convert the barn that sits in the shadow of a power line tower to a studio. That now seems unlikely, she said.
Lately, her paintings have reflected her frustration. One picture shows birds with beaks wrapped shut by transmission line. Another has a colorful scene of the rural Charles Town area severed by a smoky black and gray landscape of steel towers and a coal plant.
CORRECTION
A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that Prince William County receives $400 million annually in taxes on the computer equipment inside data centers. It receives $100 million annually. In addition, the article incorrectly stated that two FirstEnergy plants in West Virginia have been equipped with carbon-capturing technology. They do not have such technology in place, The article has been corrected.
Myriad Benefits of Cloud Computing Bring Out the Significance of Internet Datacenters in an Era Where Agility, On-Demand Scalability & Low Costs are Linchpins for Business Success
Myriad benefits of cloud computing, the exponential increase in data volumes and the ensuing need to expand data center capacity are poised to drive the global market for Internet Data Centers to reach US$89.5 billion by 2022.
Internet Data Centers (IDCs) are data centers operated by Internet service providers, system integrators, common carriers, and are connected to the Internet and accessed by the Internet. Unlike data centers specifically built for a single large company, IDCs are third-party data centers hosted on behalf of companies and are designed to house all data-storage functions of clients and/or house all servers and related Internet equipment. IDCs facilitate in the maintenance of resources and also enable integration of server storage and networking. Increased information availability, enhanced data access and improved server capabilities are major advantages of IDCs. These data centers also aid in addressing various business challenges including scalability, flexibility and manageability, while also reducing costs. With growing emphasis on cost reduction, the benefits of shared infrastructures are emerging into the spotlight, thereby driving popularity of third party, outsourced IDCs. The increased focus on reducing internal consumption of resources and dispensing the cost-burden of IT administration are leading to increased reliance on third party “multi-sourced” partners. With broadband Internet changing the basics of computing, building of IDCs is gaining prominence in the data center industry. The continuous evolution of IT and technology, growing prominence of cloud-based services and Internet of Things (IoT), and increasing role of mobility in enterprise operations are enhancing data storage needs of companies, thus driving businesses to invest in expanding capacity of data centers. The market is also being positively impacted by the shift towards greener and more efficient facilities, due to the growing importance of sustainability and green accreditations.
The growing realization of the importance of sharing IT infrastructures, software, servers and bandwidth for successfully doing more with less continues to drive growth in the market. Over the coming years, the market is expected to grow driven by sustained efforts to upgrade and maintain data centers, with growth also being fostered by the increasing number of available applications. Increasing use of cloud computing and the growing need for ubiquitous data are driving growth in the Internet data centers market. The increasing deployment of Internet data centers in heterogeneous environments and hybrid clouds is also anticipated to emerge as a critical factor over the coming years. The growth in the market will also be driven by the expanding range of functionalities offered by the centers. At present cloud storage, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, application servers, data warehouses and file servers are some of the applications of Internet data centers.
As stated by the new market research report on Internet Data Centers, the United States represents the largest market worldwide. Asia-Pacific is poised to record the fastest CAGR of 20.6% over the analysis period. The market is being driven by the rapid expansion of cloud-based services and increased adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) in several countries across the region.
Major players in the market include 21Vianet Group Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., AT&T Inc., BT Global Services plc, Cogent Communications, Inc., Compañía Anónima Nacional Teléfonos de Venezuela, Cyxtera Technologies, Digital Realty Trust, DXC Technology Co., Equinix Inc., Fidelity Information Services LLC (FIS™), Google Inc., International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Microsoft Corporation, QTS Realty Trust, Inc., Reliance Communications Ltd., and Servicios Alestra S.A. de C.V., among others.
The research report titled “Internet Data Centers – Market Analysis, Trends, and Forecasts” announced by Global Industry Analysts Inc., provides a comprehensive review of market trends, issues, drivers, mergers, acquisitions and other strategic industry activities of global companies. The report provides market estimates and projections for all major geographic markets such as the US, Canada, Japan, Europe (France, Germany, Italy, UK, Spain, Russia and Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (China, India and Rest of Asia-Pacific), Latin America (Brazil and Rest of Latin America) and Rest of World.
Internet Data Centers Market Professional Survey Report 2018
Internet Data Centers Market Professional Survey Report 2018
Internet Data Centers report studies Internet Data Centers in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2013 to 2018, and forecast to 2025.
This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each…
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Important Linguistic intercourse about Datacenters
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New Post has been published on www.mouseworldnow.com
New Post has been published on http://www.mouseworldnow.com/news/breaking-news/zte-wins-30-77-share-of-china-mobile-tender-for-high-performance-routers.html
ZTE Wins 30.77% Share of China Mobile Tender for High-Performance Routers
Shenzhen, China, 21st October, 2014 – ZTE Corporation (“ZTE”) (H share stock code: 0763.HK / A share stock code: 000063.SZ), a publicly-listed provider of telecommunications equipment, network solutions and mobile devices, has said that it has been been awarded 30.77% of China Mobile Group’s annual tender for high-performance routers, the second-highest allocation among all vendors.
As a result of the tender, ZTE’s ZXR10 M6000-S broadband multi-service gateway will be qualified for deployment in China Mobile’s networks for services including 4G LTE, IP MAN networks, internet data centers, and enterprise-class services. China Mobile’s 2014-15 tender for high-performance routers and switches drew bids from 13 vendors, including ZTE, Cisco and Juniper Networks. ZTE was selected by China Mobile in router categories including P, PE, SR and CE.
Delivering high performance and large capacity, the ZXR10 M6000 router can help operators satisfy requirements for high-speed interconnections in cloud computing and mobile Internet services. The ZXR10 M6000 and ZTE’s other high-performance routers have been deployed by China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, in addition to carriers in other parts of Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa, helping ZTE sustain rapid growth in the operators market.
As one of the core providers of information and communication products in China, ZTE is committed to helping operators deploy high-performance, scalable and efficient networks that are future-proof for next-generation services.
