With their scale and 130-gigawatt pipeline of new large-load customers, the planned combination of electric utility and wholesale power giants NextEra Energy and Dominion may substantially accelerate the buildout of new gas-fired power plants and, with that, the need for more pipeline capacity.
As rising AI-driven demand for data centers has supported growth in key markets like Virginia and Texas, developers are increasingly casting a wider net. Today, we examine the factors drawing large-scale projects to “non-key” states, with a close look at Indiana, Louisiana, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Data center development is booming across the country. But power and water supplies, fiber connectivity, and regulatory environments differ across states. Today’s RBN blog compares seven leading states for data centers on the key factors that help determine development outcomes.
All the speculation you hear about the future of data centers comes with the promise of massive amounts of electricity usage down the line. But which facilities are using the most grid power right now?
More than 70 new data centers are under development in Virginia, which is already the world’s leading hub for the massive, high-tech facilities. But given the rapid pace of the buildout and the challenges that come with it, it’s probably no surprise that not everyone in the Old Dominion State is as enthusiastic about data centers as they once were. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at some of the biggest data centers in the works and discuss their path forward.
Before data centers were the hot topic everywhere, Virginia was already rolling out the red carpet and it seemed that tech firms were constructing facilities as fast as humanly possible, drawn by the state’s robust fiber-optic network and low power prices. But while other states are racing to catch up, Virginia may be hitting the brakes. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at what makes Virginia so “sweet” for data center developers, their impact on the state, and efforts by some to slow progress.
Data center power demand is soaring as AI — artificial intelligence — rapidly expands across all sorts of applications. That statement is certainly the top buzz factor in today’s energy markets. These facilities need 24x7, super-reliable power, and there’s only one power generation fuel that has any hope of keeping up with the demand surge: natural gas. While most data center developers would prefer green energy to cover their power requirements, the intermittent nature of wind and solar means that for many facilities, it can't happen, at least for the short-to-medium term hyped-up market we are seeing right now. But how much incremental power are we talking about? And how much natural gas will be needed? That’s what we’ll explore in today’s RBN blog.
The growing number of energy-intensive data centers coming online across the U.S. is spurring utilities to ramp up their plans for adding new sources of power generation — including a slew of gas-fired plants — and also complicating their efforts to rely more on renewable resources and decarbonize the power grid. The push to quickly develop new energy infrastructure is also running into well-documented issues with permitting such projects. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the proliferation of massive data centers — many of them catering to the surge in interest in artificial intelligence (AI) — and what that means for utilities and power-related demand for natural gas.
