Data Centers

[Anonymous]

There are so many data centers in Virginia that use so much energy, they are planning to increase our electricity costs to fund capital improvements - while data centers get tax breaks. Data Centers are a parasite on society.

"The big investments needed to build all this infrastructure will be felt by the average consumer, too. Dominion expects to raise residential energy bills by a few percentage points each year over the next 15 years, Ruby said. https://www.vpm.org/news/2024-12-10/unprecedented-energy-demand-from-data-centers-poses-big-challenges-for-virginia-commission-says

[Anonymous]

You and your neighbors voted for the county supervisors that approved this data center insanity.

Blame yourselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You and your neighbors voted for the county supervisors that approved this data center insanity.

Blame yourselves.

To be fair many of these supervisors misled the public and blatantly lied about their level of support for data centers. The previous PWC Chair lost her seat over it. The current chair (Deshundra Jefferson) is only marginally better about data centers and it has been very disappointing. She campaigned heavily against data centers but has basically green lighted almost all of the data center rezoning applications. I hope someone with a backbone who actually listens to what voters want replaces her.

[Anonymous]

Notice there aren't many on the Maryland side. One fo the reasons is zoning.

Datacenters aren't all bad. They provide very high-paying jobs (IT engineers) and they need people 24/7 so it's steady work. But, it only takes a few to man a datacenter with the footprint of a small shopping mall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Notice there aren't many on the Maryland side. One fo the reasons is zoning.

Datacenters aren't all bad. They provide very high-paying jobs (IT engineers) and they need people 24/7 so it's steady work. But, it only takes a few to man a datacenter with the footprint of a small shopping mall.

Loudoun County has approved around 43 million sq feet, PWC has approved over 80 million Sq feet.

Just for perspective the amount of electricity required to power these data centers is likely around 18,000+ Megawatts. The Lake Anna nuclear plant has a generation capacity of 1,860MW. So Virginia needs the equivalent of 9.6 nuclear power plants to supply the electricity for all of the approved data centers in just two counties.

[Anonymous]

There is no nova without data centers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Notice there aren't many on the Maryland side. One fo the reasons is zoning.

Datacenters aren't all bad. They provide very high-paying jobs (IT engineers) and they need people 24/7 so it's steady work. But, it only takes a few to man a datacenter with the footprint of a small shopping mall.

It had very little to do with zoning. More to do with geographic proximity to undersea cables combined with a much more business friendly state.

[Anonymous]

Yawn

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Notice there aren't many on the Maryland side. One fo the reasons is zoning.

Datacenters aren't all bad. They provide very high-paying jobs (IT engineers) and they need people 24/7 so it's steady work. But, it only takes a few to man a datacenter with the footprint of a small shopping mall.

[Anonymous]

I specifically avoid using AI to make the data centers in NoVa get eventually shut down. Doing my part

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yawn

We need 9 new nuclear power plants to provide all this electricity. It is definitely not a trivial discussion. Electricity consumption in Virginia is projected to double over the next 15 years and this is almost exclusively due to data centers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yawn

We need 9 new nuclear power plants to provide all this electricity. It is definitely not a trivial discussion. Electricity consumption in Virginia is projected to double over the next 15 years and this is almost exclusively due to data centers.

So let's build some nuclear plants. We should have been doing that for the last 50 years anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Notice there aren't many on the Maryland side. One fo the reasons is zoning.

Datacenters aren't all bad. They provide very high-paying jobs (IT engineers) and they need people 24/7 so it's steady work. But, it only takes a few to man a datacenter with the footprint of a small shopping mall.

It had very little to do with zoning. More to do with geographic proximity to undersea cables combined with a much more business friendly state.

You might want to Google Ag Reserve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yawn

We need 9 new nuclear power plants to provide all this electricity. It is definitely not a trivial discussion. Electricity consumption in Virginia is projected to double over the next 15 years and this is almost exclusively due to data centers.

So let's build some nuclear plants. We should have been doing that for the last 50 years anyway.

It is not the that simple. The north Anna nuclear plant has 1,000 acres of land and it uses 2 million gallons of water per minute (for cooling) at full capacity. So you need a location that can supply 2.9 billion gallons of water per day just to cool the nuclear plant. The waste heat in the water is quite substantial and even if the water supply is available it can completely decimate the local ecosystem. Not all locations that have a ready supply of billions of gallons of water per day are environmentally suitable for a nuclear plant. Then you still need to build the infrastructure to (high voltage power lines) to bring the electricity to data centers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yawn

We need 9 new nuclear power plants to provide all this electricity. It is definitely not a trivial discussion. Electricity consumption in Virginia is projected to double over the next 15 years and this is almost exclusively due to data centers.

So let's build some nuclear plants. We should have been doing that for the last 50 years anyway.

It is not the that simple. The north Anna nuclear plant has 1,000 acres of land and it uses 2 million gallons of water per minute (for cooling) at full capacity. So you need a location that can supply 2.9 billion gallons of water per day just to cool the nuclear plant. The waste heat in the water is quite substantial and even if the water supply is available it can completely decimate the local ecosystem. Not all locations that have a ready supply of billions of gallons of water per day are environmentally suitable for a nuclear plant. Then you still need to build the infrastructure to (high voltage power lines) to bring the electricity to data centers.

This does not even get into the costs for infrastructure build out that will largely be incurred by non data center utility customers and VA taxpayers. Building 9 nuclear power plants and all of grid capacity will easily 100 billion even under the most optimistic assumptions. Even though data centers account for almost 100% of this increased electricity demand, everyone else will pay for most of the cost due the current methodology used to pass infrastructure costs to electricity consumers. Data centers are 20% of current electricity consumption in VA, so they are only required to pay 20% of the rate increases despite account for basically 100% of the increased demand. Non data center customers will be stuck paying the other 80% even though they have nothing to do with the demand. So everyone else is in VA is subsidizing data center electricity consumption by $80 billion dollars or more. Your response is incredibly flippant and indicates a complete lack of understanding regarding the complexity of this situation, environmental impact, and costs to other electricity customers.