BLACKSBURG, Va. (WDBJ) – Virginia has over 600 data centers, by far the most of any state in the country.
A state audit commission shows the state has 13% of the world’s computing capacity and a quarter of the country’s data center power.
That expansion is reaching Southwest Virginia. Four data centers have been announced in our hometowns in the last year.
The most well-known is Google in the Greenfield area of Botetourt County. The tech giant is expected to cover the costs of the required infrastructure.
Meanwhile, two could be on the way for Campbell County. One project from Mesh Capital LLC is moving forward, while another still needs approval from county supervisors. This comes as the county, last month, decided to make data center development more difficult, requiring special permits.
In Wythe County, leaders say an “AI computing campus” by Solis Arx is planned for 99 acres.
Some of these projects are facing pushback. Residents cite concerns that their electric and water bills could rise thanks to the data centers using more power.
On Friday, WDBJ7 spoke with a Virginia Tech researcher to learn about a recent workshop the school conducted about the impact of data centers around the state.
The workshop consisted of a wide range of experts from around the region, including utility representatives, university professors, national lab representatives, state government representatives, and data center developers. The workshop examined the benefits and challenges created by data centers in Virginia.
“Right now, there’s not been a lot of impact, but of course, the scale changes everything. The more data centers that we get in Virginia, and we already have a lot, but the more data centers that we get in Virginia, that’s going to impact our environment, our water use, and so on,” said Dr. Ali Mehrizi-Sani, Professor and Director of the Power and Energy Center at Virginia.
Dr. Mehrizi-Sani was the host of the workshop. He said public perception of data centers is mixed, with some people excited about their economic impact while others worry about their environmental impact and strain on infrastructure.
Power use is one of the biggest concerns about data centers. Mehrizi-Sani said these facilities already account for 25% of the state’s electricity usage. However, so far, that hasn’t had a major impact on people’s electric bills.
“It’s too early to say what exactly the impact is going to be, but there would be, of course, if you don’t plan for it, electricity is going to become more expensive. If you do plan for it, it’s going to go down,” said Mehrizi-Sani.
Mehrizi-Sani said Virginia will need to increase its power generation sources to match continued data center growth, or there will be long-term electric bill increases, because that would require more outside power to be purchased. He noted that data center owners often pay for additional electrical substations their facility may need.
Another big concern is the amount of water data centers use for cooling. Mehrizi-Sani said right now there hasn’t been a major impact on water resources, but that could change as more data centers are built.
Mehrizi-Sani also said that data center technology is constantly evolving, and there are ways to reduce the amount of water these facilities use by reusing the heat they generate.
“Instead of thinking of heat as an unwanted by-product, we could actually put it to use. Instead of me having to burn gas or use expensive electricity, I could use some heat that was generated already by computation from the CPUs or the chips in a data center,” he said. “That format, that thought of central heating, is something we’ve had in Europe for a long time. A lot of European cities do have this central heating perspective. In the very congested Northern Virginia area, that could be a very plausible idea.”
Mehrizi-Sani said the other big data center challenge discussed during the workshop was cybersecurity.
“If somebody takes control of a data center, it’s not easy, but it’s possible, then they can modulate the amount of electrical load they draw from the system. If you gain control of maybe two or three of these large data centers, then they can introduce a large cybersecurity risk. You could cause power outages, you can also cause other impacts on the reliability of the power system,” he said.
Mehrizi-Sani said that data centers are critical for solidifying Virginia as an AI leader. Virginia Tech’s workshop showed that data centers have major economic benefits for the state, both from tax revenue and job creation.
“It’s true that past the construction stage, maybe they do not need a lot of people to be working there full-time, but they still bring a lot of ancillary jobs. For example, people who have to plan for data center growth, people who have to work and plan for the electric part of this. All those ancillary jobs may be directly or indirectly hired by the data center operators, so it still positively impacts the economy,” said Mehrizi-Sani.
In an interview with WDBJ7’s Kate Capodanno, Governor-Elect Abagail Spanberger said it’s important that these facilities are looked at on a case-by-case basis depending on community needs.
“What is essential here is that the state is a partner with localities that are either interested in welcoming investment, whether it’s data centers or whether it’s solar, but also ensuring that they have best practices,” said Spanberger, a Democrat who will be sworn in as Governor on January 17. “There are ways that a community can get it right and truly benefit from these types of investments, and there are other ways where a business will come in and not give back in the same strong, economically driving way. I want to ensure that any place where large investments go, the local communities are seeing that benefit.”
Mehrizi-Sani said coming out of the workshop, the goal is to create an engineering research center at Virginia Tech, bringing together experts from across the state to find solutions to the challenges presented by data centers before they become problems.
“I may know the power and engineering side, but I’m not an expert on the water use, for example. By creating these teams, and we already have professors from mechanical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, public policy, and so on, the idea is that the team collectively will be able to address those challenges and become a national model,” he said.
Mehrizi-Sani said that he does expect we’ll see more data centers built in Southwest Virginia over the next decade because of the amount of available land and friendly state policies.
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