Showing posts with label electricity. Show all posts

01 August 2026

How Loudoun County data centers are linked to power flickering across half the U.S. & SUPPORT VIRGINIA DATA CENTER MORATORIUM 24&30JUL26

WEDNESDAY was a warning of what is to come if we continue to allow data centers to be built without addressing the over consumption of power and water and all the other issues that have developed with the ai / data center boom. Virginia Commonwealth Senator Glen Sturtevant has sent Gov Spanberger a proposal asking her to issue an executive order declaring a moratorium on data centers. My e mail to Gov Spanberger follows this report from NBC4 Washington and after my e mail is the moratorium proposal by Sen Sturtevant....

How Loudoun County data centers are linked to power flickering across half the U.S.

“This is what experts are worried about, right? The data centers are such a big load on the grid that they can have detrimental impact on the surrounding grid,” an engineer said.

By Drew Wilder • Published July 24, 2026 • Updated on July 25, 2026 at 12:39 pm

Just before 8 a.m. Wednesday, electricity flickered on and off for about 10 minutes. An engineer’s data says it happened throughout the Eastern half of the U.S., from Chicago, to Boston and Miami.

He ties the problem to Data Center Alley in Ashburn, Virginia, and says the seemingly small blip is a sign our infrastructure is in danger.

Experts say cracks in our infrastructure grid are starting to show as the data center industry consumes electricity at a rate the world has never experienced. On Wednesday, a crack became visible to millions of Americans in their homes and businesses.

“This is what experts are worried about, right? The data centers are such a big load on the grid that they can have detrimental impact on the surrounding grid,” said Bob Marshall with Ting Labs.

The company sells a device to plug into your wall to monitor your home's electricity and alert you if something's awry, to try to prevent an electrical fire.

“You plug it in, connect it to Wi-Fi. It takes 30 million electric measurements every second,” Marshall explained.

Power drops and spikes in the data: ‘This is what experts are worried about’

With millions of these devices in homes across the U.S., Marshall's data collection saw something he flagged as a concern: At 7:56 a.m. Wednesday, electricity throughout the Eastern half of the U.S. dropped, spiked, dropped, spiked and then leveled off.

Marshall said it happened a few more times over the next 10 minutes.

“This one event, serving either one building or whatever that data center complex is, impacted the entire region here, and this is what experts are worried about,” he said.

Here’s what Dominion Energy says happened

News4 reached out to Dominion Energy about the power glitch. The power company said a piece of equipment on one of its high-voltage transmission lines that serves data centers failed, knocking it out of service. As a result, the data centers systems switched to backup power.

In a statement to News4, a Dominion Energy spokesperson said, “Dominion Energy did not disconnect area data centers from the grid; the data centers’ own control systems transferred them to backup power for a very short period of time.”

Think of ripples in a puddle when a rock is thrown: The data centers switching their power source is the rock. When that change impacted the water – or the power grid in this case – the major swing in a data center switching off sent ripples through the electric current across half the country.

Ting Labs provided News4 with a graphic showing the scale of the service disruption. The company said orange is really bad and red is worse. Those colors cover more than half of the U.S.

Marshall explained.

“People working on regulations around this, they're concerned that one of these events in the future could cause the grid to become unstable, and it does not come back to normal in a few minutes or 10 minutes, and we're dealing with a real big problem,” he said.

That problem could be a blackout.

‘The whole industry is facing things they've never faced before’

In this case, Dominion Energy's safety equipment kicked in, worked as intended and mitigated the issue. But in a county with more than 200 data centers, engineers and leaders say this could be a glimpse of how major the impact could be if just a couple of data centers need to switch their power source.

“The whole industry is facing things they've never faced before, and they are doing their best to figure out what's going on and to do preemptive measures. And I think for the most part, they've been able to do that,” said Michael Turner, vice chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors.

Marshall, with Ting Labs, said that while there's clear correlation to the data center industry, he stopped short of drawing causation. But Marshall said these types of events are happening more regularly than ever before.

MY E MAIL TO GOV SPANBERGER

I sent this e mail to Gov Spanberger ( abigail.spanberger@governor.virginia.gov ) and encourage all to make the time to e mail her also.....VA Commonwealth Senator Glen Sturtevant requested on 30 JULY 2026 that you issue an Executive Order declaring a Data Center moratorium in Virginia. This pause in the planning and development / construction of data centers is necessary to allow the necessary studies regarding energy requirements, availability, and transmission, high voltage transmission line health affects, backup power systems and their air and noise pollution health affects, water consumption, quality, closed (recycled) water cooling systems and the affect on water availability for residential customers, and making sure utility rates for data centers are not subsidized by residential, school district, and local government customers. The issues and concerns regarding reports about the Virginia DEQ of seemingly deliberately minimizing the air pollution levels and health risk of the Vantage Data Center in Sterling also need to be investigated and addressed. There are already 600+ data centers in Virginia straining our energy and natural resources and communities to the breaking point. We, the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia are asking you and expect you to honor this request for an immediate moratorium on data centers until the mentioned issues are studied and addressed and regulations are established protecting and benefiting all of us.

POST ON FACEBOOK GROUP ASHBURN VILLAGE RESIDENTS & FRIENDS AGAINST DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT

29 June 2026

After nearly two decades, this massive New Mexico wind project is now powering California 18JUN26

IT is a well established fast that NOT MY president drumpf/trump is an idiot and actually has been an idiot since taking his first breath. In spite of him and his stupidity regarding wind energy and actually all renewable, clean energy, this project has been completed and is on line!!! This from the Los Angeles Times.....

After nearly two decades, this massive New Mexico wind project is now powering California

Hayley Smith

MAIL

Hayley Smith is an environment reporter at the Los Angeles Times focused on climate policy, technology and solutions. She previously worked on the breaking news team. Originally from Miami, she holds a master’s degree in journalism from USC.

June 18, 2026 2:01 PM PT

Nearly two decades in the making, SunZia — an $11-billion New Mexico wind-and-transmission project — is now online, sending new clean power to Arizona and California.
Spanning 916 turbines and a 550-mile high-voltage line, the project can power 1 million homes and already has helped drive record wind generation on California’s grid.
The project arrives as the Trump administration doubles down on fossil fuel investments and works to slow the development of offshore wind.

The largest wind energy project in U.S. history is now online, delivering power from a massive array in New Mexico to Arizona and California — and signaling a new era for sending clean electricity across the West.

Nearly two decades in the making, the estimated $11-billion SunZia project from Pattern Energy is now fully operational, company officials said Thursday. It’s made up of 916 turbines that can produce up to 3.65 gigawatts of electricity, making it potentially more powerful than the Hoover Dam.

It’s also more than three times bigger than either of the next two largest U.S. wind farms, Alta Wind in Kern County and Great Prairie in northern Texas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

It’s a scale that would have been difficult to imagine even a decade ago.

Crucially, the project also includes a 550-mile high-voltage direct-current transmission line that delivers wind power from New Mexico to the Palo Verde substation in Arizona, where it then feeds into Southern California. In all, some two-thirds of the power sent across the line will be delivered to the state.

Experts say the project already has begun making a difference on the grid: Since SunZia began testing in April, the state’s Independent System Operator, CAISO, has reported record-breaking amounts of wind power on the California grid at least five times, according to Dennis Wamsted, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Wind output on May 15 hit a record 8,294 megawatts — almost 1,600 megawatts higher than the record before SunZia power began flowing into the state, he said.

“This is a milestone, there’s no doubt about it,” Wamsted said. “They’re tapping into a great wind resource in New Mexico, and that wind resource is now going to be used across the Southwest. It’s good for consumers everywhere, and it’s really good for folks who are in favor of a transition away from fossil fuels.”

The New Mexico region was selected in part for its strong and consistent winds, comparable to those off the coast of Morro Bay.

Much of it will come when the wind picks up at night, complementing California’s abundant daytime solar power, and batteries, which discharge for a few hours around sunset.

But it’s not only a benefit for California. The project reflects a renewed effort to move large amounts of remote wind or solar power to high-demand population centers across multiple states.

“Large-scale transmission is essential to meeting the West’s growing energy needs and strengthening reliability across the grid,” said Elliot Mainzer, CAISO’s president and chief executive, in a statement. “Projects of this scale help deliver energy reliably to areas of rising demand, improve the movement of power across states and support a more resilient, flexible and affordable electric system.”

It also comes at a critical moment. While many countries, including China, are investing heavily in renewable energy including wind, solar and battery energy storage, the U.S. has pulled back on these under the Trump administration, which has prioritized fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal in its mission to “unleash American energy.”

The president has especially targeted offshore wind, striking a series of multimillion-dollar deals with energy developers to walk away from offshore wind leases in federal waters and instead invest in domestic fossil fuel and geothermal projects. Two of those abandoned leases have been off the coast of California’s Morro Bay.

The data show land-based wind, such as the SunZia project, already is cost competitive with other major new-build power sources in the U.S. Despite Trump’s approach, red states have continued to expand their wind power, such as Texas, which now leads the nation in the development of wind and solar power as well as battery storage.

Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas and Illinois have invested heavily in wind, while Wyoming is developing a 3,550 megawatt wind farm, the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project, that will export wind power to Western states including California.

“The administration cannot stop the transition,” Wamsted said. “The market [is] moving toward renewable energy.”

The SunZia project faced a long road to completion with ownership changes, slow permitting processes and major redesigns since it was first conceived in 2006. Pattern Energy acquired the project in 2022.

“SunZia proves that we can still build the consequential infrastructure this country needs,” Hunter Armistead, chief executive of Pattern Energy, said in a statement, noting that “many thought this was too big and too complex to finish.”

There was opposition, including from environmental groups concerned about habitat fragmentation, effects on bird migration and other disturbances from construction of the transmission line, which crosses the San Pedro River Valley, an important migratory flyway and river corridor in the Arizona desert.

Perhaps the most significant opposition came from groups concerned about cultural and architectural sites along the transmission path. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Tohono O’odham Nation, the San Carlos Apache Tribe and the nonprofit Archaeology Southwest challenged the project in court, contending that the developers did not comply with historic preservation rules and that the project will cause irreversible damage to sensitive areas.

“Instead of taking the landscape-level impact into consideration in planning and designing the power line, they basically did a slalom course through the places where there were occurrences of environmental sensitivities and cultural sites,” said John Welch, vice president of preservation and collaboration at Archaeology Southwest and a professor at Simon Fraser University. “And this is especially true for the San Pedro Valley, which for decades now has been well known as a place of exceptional cultural significance.”

Welch said a motion for summary judgment is still pending in the U.S. District Court in Arizona, which the groups hope will require the developer to undo parts of the project or otherwise address their concerns.

But others see it as a huge victory for the region and the U.S., including Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who was instrumental in ushering SunZia to completion over the course of nearly 20 years.

Reached by phone Thursday, Heinrich said he believes SunZia is a model for big infrastructure projects in the U.S. It also demonstrates that transmission is a constraint that can be addressed.

“We’re at a point now where it’s fairly straightforward to site and develop new generation — be it wind, solar, batteries, etc. — but getting the electrons where they need to go is the limiting factor in many of these cases,” Heinrich said. “Demand is on the rise for the first time since air conditioning became commonplace, so transmission is important to be able to solve for that.”

The project also underscores the need for permitting reform to help expedite the planning and approval process for similar projects moving forward, the senator said.

“My hope is that we can take this project, lift it up as an example, and apply some of those lessons more broadly,” he said, adding, “we need to be able to do multiple SunZias.”