Taming Energy Hogs and Saving the "Grid"
Warnings about the impending failure of the electrical "grid" have reached a fever pitch. "Data Centers" are a leading "energy hog" that are finally getting push back. There are solutions.
Loudoun County, Virginia, has not only been the nation’s wealthiest county, boasting the highest median incomes for a couple of decades, but also an international hub for internet “data centers.”
For those of you who’ve wondered what “the cloud” or “cloud-based services” are, here you go. Data centers are the cloud, and Uncle Sam, including the Pentagon, is a significant customer. The Pentagon just awarded Microsoft a $10 billion contract for its JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) cloud contract.
Estimates are that well over 70 percent of the nation’s internet traffic runs through my home county, which borders Maryland to the north and West Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley to the west. Traffic permitting, it’s about an hour’s drive outside the nation’s capital, including the Pentagon.
The demand for new data centers, windowless energy hogs that employ very few people, continues unabated. This trend has consequences, as these centers contribute significantly to environmental issues such as energy consumption. Chances are your local jurisdiction is competing for or approving new data centers, with their distinctive humming noises and odes to Soviet-style architecture.
I sometimes wonder about the proximity of all these data centers to Mount Weather, which I can see from my home and located in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Mount Weather serves as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s “continuity of government” operations center. If things go south, they ensure the government still functions. Reportedly, congressional leaders were helicoptered here on 9/11. Nice neighbors.
That is changing where I live and neighboring jurisdictions comprising Washington, DC’s exurbs. Just this week, Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors, for the first time, voted down a new 70-acre complex near a highly populated area in wealthy Ashburn. The vote was 5-4. The proposed data center complex alone would consume as much energy as produced by a new gas-powered generating facility near the county seat of Leesburg, Panda Stonewall, which went online less than five years ago.
The data centers’ biggest customers, if not actual owners, include hi-tech companies with which you are all too familiar, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—the federal government contracts with these companies to use these servers for their purposes. The growth of artificial intelligence - AI - is driving much of this. And it’s a global problem.
However, like any other entity, Data Centers have their consequences. On average, a data center consumes enough electrical power to fuel 15,000 homes, a staggering figure. Consequently, power companies, including Dominion Power, the high-powered public utility that services most of northern Virginia and is one of the top political contributors in the Commonwealth, seeks new energy sources to meet their demands and cater to the growing population. Data centers comprise an estimated 21 percent of Dominion Power’s energy load. That’s a lot of juice.
A company that coordinates power transmission lines across several states in the mid-Atlantic region recently approved new powerlines that will likely cut through bucolic and more rural western Loudoun County (read: few voters, more Republicans), particularly between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Catoctin Ridge. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission - FERC - approved cost “guarantees.” A recent “town hall” hosted by the Piedmont Environmental Council - to which I belong - was packed with concerned citizens about unsightly powerlines crisscrossing near historic rural communities, farmland, wineries, and ruining vistas.
Don’t be smug, Maryland, West Virginia, or Pennsylvania residents and landowners. These new powerlines will also plow through your states, feeding our local data centers, which are also a big source of tax revenue for Loudoun County.
It didn’t go unnoticed that Kelsey Bagot, a young lawyer who worked for NextEra Energy, the company that proposed the new powerlines, was recently appointed to Virginia’s Corporation Commission, which regulates public utilities. The Democrat-controlled Virginia legislature unanimously confirmed the appointment. In Virginia, the Governor has no say in such matters, even state Supreme Court appointments.
You’ll understand if more than a few people who may have powerlines in their backyards believe this looks a little cozy. Dominion customers will be privileged to pay for the new powerlines with higher electric bills.
Meanwhile, we’re being fed endless stories about how the electrical grid is about to collapse. Californians, who have dealt with summer brownouts for years, understand this. The lack of investment in infrastructure, combined with growth and demand and a heavy dose of political shenanigans, creates pressure on the system. This, too, is a global problem.
Nobody wants powerplants or powerlines in their backyard.
“Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma,” the Washington Post recently screamed. “Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.”
“Two-thirds of North America could face power shortages this summer during periods of extreme electricity demand and spiking temperatures, the nation’s grid reliability monitor warned Wednesday,” breathlessly reported E&E news, part of Politico. “The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) found that the number of regions with an “elevated risk” of power shortages has increased as temperatures rise and power plants retire. In a worst-case combination of severe heat and unexpected generation outages, the western United States, most of Texas, and the Carolinas face a heightened risk of rolling power blackouts, NERC said.
Are there solutions? Yes.
First, give Gov. Glenn Youngkin credit for setting the stage for first-in-the-nation modular nuclear power generating facilities, especially in economically hard-hit and formerly coal-producing southwest Virginia. Unfortunately, it will take at least a decade for anything to come online, and that’s if all goes well, including with future governors, legislatures, and the profoundly bureaucratic Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I'm not holding my breath. Democrats don’t care much about nuclear power or, frankly, southwest Virginia - they’re all about unreliable and equally unsightly wind and solar. Worse, Southwest Virginia votes Republican and is heavily outvoted by way-left Progressive Democrats in northern Virginia’s vote-rich DC suburbs, few of which would ever consider traversing outside the beltway to Abingdon or other delightful communities in the Appalachian foothills.
Second, there’s a partial solution that no one - not environmentalists, politicians, state regulators, and too few data center companies is seriously considering.
Hydrogen fuel cell technology.
What’s that? I was afraid you might ask. Here’s my best explanation, courtesy of the good ‘ole US Department of Energy.
“Fuel cells work like batteries, but they do not run down or need recharging. They produce electricity and heat as long as fuel is supplied.
Here’s your cure for insomnia: “A fuel cell consists of two electrodes—a negative electrode (or anode) and a positive electrode (or cathode)—sandwiched around an electrolyte. A fuel, such as hydrogen, is fed to the anode, and air is fed to the cathode. In a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, a catalyst separates hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons, which take different paths to the cathode. The electrons go through an external circuit, creating a flow of electricity. The protons migrate through the electrolyte to the cathode, where they reunite with oxygen and the electrons to produce water and heat.”
Got that? There will be a test. According to some environmental purists, there is one “downside.” A fuel must start the process, including either unreliable renewable fuels or natural gas, a clean, reliable, and abundant yet somehow evil fossil fuel.
The cool thing about hydrogen is its abundance and many applications to create energy (and heat) for everything from airplane engines to automobiles and data centers. Just ask Microsoft. Or Pepperidge Farm. More about Pepperidge Farm in a moment. It’s how I know about this stuff.
Microsoft first. They partnered with others on fuel cell technology at a data center near Cheyenne, Wyoming, to provide backup power to the facility. In addition, companies like Bosch - better known for their superior dishwashers and other appliances - features a single oxide fuel cell system that is scalable for data centers. That means they can be ramped up to meet demand.
Now, Pepperidge Farm, specifically a bakery in the Hartford suburb of Bloomfield.
One of the company’s newest bakeries, Bloomfield, which opened in 2003, installed a small hydrogen fuel cell in 2006. Two years later, they added another, much based on its success in generating electricity and heat for a bakery serving the northeastern United States; they added another, much larger fuel cell, to which the State of Connecticut contributed $1.3 million. Company officials later told me that the process was so efficient that they could occasionally return energy to the grid.
“Fuel cells produce electricity electrochemically (without combustion) with near-zero emissions of nitrous oxides, sulfur oxides, and particulate matter,” a Campbell Soup (owners of Pepperidge Farm since 1961) news release stated. “Because they do not combust fuel, they emit much less carbon dioxide than other fossil fuel generators. DFC fuel cells operate at 47 percent electrical efficiency, so they use less fuel to produce more power, saving energy costs. When used in combined heat and power applications, such as the Pepperidge Farm installation where the byproduct heat is used in the baking process, the overall system efficiency can be up to 80 percent.”
No, bakeries don’t have much in common with data centers. However, hydrogen fuel technology has broad applications. If it works for a big bakery serving several states in the northeastern US, it can work for data centers, if only to lessen the load on the existing power grid and help reduce the need for new powerlines. Or reduce the threat of brownouts and power outages.
My question is, why is no one talking about this? Sure, fuel cell technology is not inexpensive and has its limitations. But it is safe and very environmentally friendly. When the grid is under such pressure, shouldn’t we consider this part of an “all the above” energy strategy? And suppose public investment is needed to help make this happen. In that case, I’d happily support my tax dollars for that purpose in exchange for keeping my electric bills on the low side, including retrofitting existing data centers.
The technology and partners are there, and the need is there. But is there political will to make it happen? It’s one thing for Loudoun County to boast of its high median incomes and data centers. How about taking the lead on an idea that could positively transform the country’s energy picture?
The Hydrogen fuel cell technology is fascinating. And it does offer a reasonable solution based on innovation not "punishment and scarcity."