There were no worries about exceeding capacity this time.
On Wednesday evening, the Rappahannock Group Sierra Club and Inform Fredericksburg hosted another data center information event, at the Howell Branch of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library.
The group’s last event at the downtown Fredericksburg library branch filled a meeting room beyond capacity. But in Stafford, there was plenty of room as the members of the public gathered to hear from environmental group representatives, elected officials and representatives from the data center industry.
Despite a lengthy list of invitees, only five panelists appeared before the public: Tim Cywinski, communications director for the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter; Martin Rapos, chief information officer at Flexnode; Monica Gary, the Stafford County supervisor representing the Aquia District; Daren Shumate, chief executive officer and founder of Shumate Engineering; and Julie Bolthouse, director of land use for the Piedmont Environmental Council.
Each panel member had five minutes to answer questions submitted ahead of time, followed by audience questions. After the 90-minute Q&A session, there were three minutes for closing remarks.
Much of the discussion revolved around water usage by the data center industry. Bolthouse, who lives and works in Loudoun County, said the PEC has been watching the boom in data centers closely and noticed both the size and needs of the campuses have grown.
“There’s also been an increase in water consumption,” she said. “It used to be that the data centers were mostly supported by a reclaimed water system but over the last four years, the potable water usage has increased significantly because of the huge amount of growth and the cooling that’s necessary for that higher energy usage.”
Shumate, who owns a mechanical electrical engineering firm that designs data centers, stated that most data centers aren’t using water for cooling anymore, instead relying on air-cooled chillers. “Most of the water usage in a data center now is for restrooms,” he said.
Rapos agreed, explaining that his company’s focus is on shrinking the size and needs of a data center. “They have been designed in a very inefficient way. That cooled air needs to be created in a loud and thirsty machine which basically creates all that pollution.”
Rapos praised the advancements of Artificial Intelligence in being able to make many aspects of life more efficient — including finding ways to make data centers smaller and less power-hungry.
Virginia is the data center capital of the world, with over 300 already operating in Loudoun, Prince William and Fairfax counties. In recent years, their reach has expanded into Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline, King George, Culpeper and Louisa counties.
“The data center space has been evolving for the past 25, 30 years,” Rapos said.
This new crop of data centers will primarily be used to power AI. Size and density will increase, the panel agreed, until innovation and advances in technology can shrink their footprint.
A lack of transparency from the major companies was Cywinski’s sticking point.
“We are doing something which is more of what we need from the big players in the data center industry. I’m talking about Amazon, Microsoft and Google,” he said. “They do not do a good job of letting us know what the operations look like. I’ve learned more about operations or potential operations of data centers in the last three minutes than I have with the available research that we have.”
Cywinski stressed that talking to the impacted communities would go a long way for these global technology companies, whom he says prefer to do things “behind closed doors.”
One audience member spoke up asking how to find the information on energy usage and fluctuations on company websites. Another questioned why the Fredericksburg Economic Development Authority was paying for a feasibility study and who would be conducting the study.
“Isn’t that the fox guarding the hen house?” she asked. “Dominion should pay for this stuff.”
“The data center issue in Virginia as a whole is a major problem that we do not have answers to, right now,” Cywinski said. “We’ve mentioned these new technologies and I’m eager to hear about them because we are not anti-data center. We’re anti-reckless data center development.”
The panelists also raised the issue of the strain on the utility system and how deals are worked out.
“The utility negotiates with the industry about their in-service dates and the load that they want,” Bolthouse explained. “Those fundamental things are what determines what kind of infrastructure is going to be necessary to serve that data center. That all happens behind closed doors. The utility and the industry are slapping high fives behind closed doors.”
