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by Laura Fletcher and Austin Rothermel
In recent years, there’s been a swift rise in the demand for data centers, driven by the expansion of cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and data-driven applications. This has led to an increased need for additional structures, systems, and electricity.
Choosing a feasible geographic location to support a new center is the first step in data center construction. As you scout potential locations, you need to ensure that the area is viable for building a data center and there is sufficient electricity to support it. To help navigate those challenges, Yes Energy®’s Infrastructure Insights Dataset enables you to track upcoming changes to generation, transmission, and demand across the US, ensuring you’re prospecting appropriate areas for new builds.
Identifying Potential Data Center Locations
As the demand for data storage and processing power continues to grow exponentially, so does their energy consumption. If you’re looking for a new data center location, you must determine whether or not an area can fulfill the upcoming data center’s capacity. Understanding where existing power plants (and substations) are located is an important part of that process, as is identifying additional generation sources that will be coming online.
Northern Virginia is a major hub for data centers, with data centers in the region estimated to handle more than one-third of global online traffic. In the screenshot below, we see upcoming data centers in the permitting or construction phase as viewed through Yes Energy’s Infrastructure Insights Dataset.
Upcoming data centers in the Northern Virginia region viewed through Yes Energy’s Infrastructure Insights Dataset
With so many new data centers currently planned, Northern Virginia looks like a good spot to site new data centers.
However, permitting has become an issue in the region. A 100-megawatt (MW) data center produces a constant humming at 80 decibels, which can lead to pushback by local residents. Since many of these data centers are in rural communities, these types of objections have led to permitting challenges.
Our Infrastructure Insights Dataset can help developers understand which communities are resisting new data center construction. Viewing canceled data centers – particularly those that weren’t awarded permits – can help you reorient your search toward a more appropriate location.
Generation and Data Center Construction
Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced it is investing $10 billion to build two data center campuses in Jackson, Mississippi. Some are questioning whether the area has enough supplemental power to support the new data centers.
Tracking current and upcoming generation is a key aspect in these discussions as well as understanding the impact on load. Tracking the number of megawatts (MW) the project is expected to use (or is currently using) allows you to understand the impact on load. For example, an AWS campus planned in Gilroy, California, is projected to use a 50 MW fuel cell system. Our Infrastructure Insights Dataset allows you to track data center size in MWs, whether the data centers are small (1-5 MW) or large in scale (20-100+ MW).
Our dataset tracks project data from over 2,000 sources, including power purchase agreements (PPAs), another important factor for data center construction. PPAs are long-term contracts between an electricity generator and a utility or company that enable the purchaser to buy energy at a pre-negotiated price. Our Infrastructure Insights Dataset captures PPAs as well as the utilities they’ve partnered with, giving our customers deeper insight into generation dynamics.
Renewable Energy and Data Center Construction
As the push to move away from gas or coal generation expands, more and more data centers are looking to renewables to help reduce their carbon footprint. As Amazon moves to more renewable energy sources, for example, they are engaging in PPAs with solar farms. In essence, the data center becomes the principal off-taker for the power generated by the solar farm.
Other data center developers work with renewables interested in building in the same location. For example, a generation developer might build a solar or wind farm next to the data center to supply as much renewable power as possible.
Developers also benefit from tracking the location of solar and wind farms coming online. In Northern Virginia, for example, we can use the Infrastructure Insights Dataset to see where a solar farm (identified by S) or wind farm (W) is coming online to help identify viable locations for a new build. Upcoming projects in the advanced development stage are shown in yellow, while green projects are under construction.
Upcoming renewable generation in the Northern Virginia region, with yellow representing projects in the advanced development stage, and green representing projects under construction from Yes Energy’s Infrastructure Insights Dataset
To navigate between project profiles and associated PPAs, we’ve cross-linked our generation database and data center database in the Infrastructure Insights Dataset. This allows customers to quickly and easily explore data center details, boosting efficiency and promoting collaboration between developers skilled in renewable power and those actively involved with new data center projects.
Interested in Learning More About Data Management Solutions?
Yes Energy’s Infrastructure Insights Dataset is the deepest, most thoroughly researched database of energy infrastructure projects in North America. Our dataset gives you access to deep insights into the ever-changing status of planned generation, transmission and distribution, and load center (ex: industrial, data centers, bitcoin) facilities coming online or retiring across the US to help you better understand upcoming changes to supply and demand.
Schedule a demo to learn how our Infrastructure Insights Dataset can help you Win the Day Ahead™.
