So, officials from power companies were alarmed when a big part of those centers - 60 of them - suddenly dropped off the grid last summer and turned to on-site generators.
Even more so, the mass reaction was triggered by a safety mechanism that came from across the whole data center industry, intending to protect computer chips and electronic equipment from damage caused by the fluctuations that came from voltage. However, this caused a surge in excess electricity, as federal regulations and utility executives have reported.
PJM, a grid operator as well as Dominion Energy, were forced to scale back output from power plants in order to protect theri grid infrastructure as well as to avoid the worst-case scenario where a cascading outage would have happened.
John Moura, the director of Reliability Assessment and System Analysis for the NERC, reported to Reuters in an interview “As these data centers get bigger and consume more energy, the grid is not designed to withstand the loss of 1,500-megawatt data centers,", also adding “At some level it becomes too large to withstand unless more grid resources are added.".
The grid operators have also planned a large power plant tripping offline. Yet, the rapid expansion of data centers processing the vast amounts of information that have been used for AI and crypto mining is now putting grid operators to plan for new contingencies as well as complicating the already difficult task of balancing the country’s supply and need of electricity.
Alison Silverstein, a former adviser to the chairman of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said “What it tells us is that the behavior of data centers has the potential to cause cascading power outages for an entire region”.
This event happened on July 10 and took place near the DC suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, an area that is known as Data Center Alley, as there are facilities from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. In this region, 70% of the world’s internet traffic flows around.
Aaron Tinjum, the vice president of Energy from Data Centre Coallitoon said “We fully recognize grid planning and management is the responsibility of utilities and grid operators, but DCC is committed to leaning in as an active and engaged partner to be helpful and ensure we collectively meet this moment,".
The coalition also added “Data center hardware and power supplies, similar to other electronics, are very sensitive to power supply stability” and that “Deviating from this range will deteriorate the optimal performance, reduce longevity, or damage the components beyond repair.”.
Ari Peskoe, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, said that regulators could also require data centers to rid trough voltage dips.
Jim Simonelli, the chief tech officer from Schnider Electronic’s secure power division added “One thing that doesn’t exist yet for the data center industry is how to be grid-friendly,”.
