Power Demand from Data Centers Keeping Coal-Fired Plants Online

 

 

October 17, 2024 - The power generation sector is looking at numerous ways to provide enough electricity to satisfy demand from data centers. Bloomberg Intelligence recently said its research shows data centers, buildings filled with servers and other computing equipment for data storage and networking that supports operations and artificial intelligence (AI), could be responsible for as much as 17% of all U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) has said one data center can require 50 times the electricity of a typical office building.

Several technology groups are looking at nuclear power, including the use of small modular reactors (SMRs), to meet their electricity needs. Energy analysts have said natural gas, whether burned in large-scale facilities or peaker plants, also will be important. 

Power consumption from data centers, though, also is benefiting coal-fired power plants, some of which may be kept running longer than expected in order to meet the increased demand for electricity from companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and others. Some coal-fired plants already have gotten a reprieve in areas where more energy is needed as data centers come online, or are in the planning stages.

The topic reportedly was discussed when C-suite executives from Alphabet (Google), AWS, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI met with government officials in Washington, D.C., last month to discuss ways to support U.S. infrastructure for AI, including data centers. Part of the discussion was about repurposing old coal sites as data center campuses. The DOE has said it will share resources with data center developers about how to repurpose former coal mines, or coal-fired power plants, to be home to data centers. Energy DELTA Lab, a collaborative effort that includes Dominion Energy Virginia and Appalachian Power, already is working on the Data Center Ridge project at a former mining site in Wise County, Virginia.

Life Extension

Maksim Sonin, an energy expert who has collaborated with several companies, including Chevron and Shell, and is a Sloan Fellow at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, said, “Driven by recent trends in AI development, projected power consumption by data centers in the U.S. is expected to increase in the range from 8% to 17% by 2030—or potentially even higher, as progress in AI technologies is not linear but exponential, as seen in Silicon Valley today.” Sonin told POWER, “With this sharp upward trend, it is highly likely that coal-fired power plants will remain a part of the U.S. energy system for longer, although their role is expected to diminish,” as more renewable and other energy resources come online. 

 

“Coal plants will have an extension of their life due to data center demand,” said Tim Echols, a commissioner and vice-chair of the Georgia Public Service Commission. Echols’ home state is actively recruiting data centers and manufacturing facilities to provide jobs and boost local economies. It already added a significant new source of power when two nuclear reactors entered service at Plant Vogtle last year and this year, providing about 2,200 MW of new electricity output in the state. Plant Vogtle, where two other reactors have operated since the 1980s, is now the nation’s largest nuclear power plant, with more than 4,600 MW of generation capacity.

Echols told POWER in an Oct. 16 interview that Georgia is preparing for a large increase in power demand. “There could be a massive increase of capacity approved next year. Data centers will account for most of it,” he said.

How to satisfy data center power demand is being discussed by utilities and energy officials nationwide. Allan Schurr, chief commercial officer with Texas-based Enchanted Rock, which provides microgrid backup power solutions to data centers and other critical infrastructure, said the debate also should include onsite generation. 

 

“AI data centers require more generating capacity—that’s a given,” said Schurr. “While we are waiting for nuclear power to bring substantial additional baseload to the grid, we don’t want to needlessly ‘recarbonize’ our energy resources by extending the life of older, less-efficient fossil generation plants like coal.

Schurr told POWER, “Today’s grid has significant available capacity with the exception of about 500 hours per year that can be mitigated with dispatchable generation. And the grid needs those 500 hours of additional capacity so we can continue to add solar and wind resources into the energy mix. Data centers can facilitate this dispatchable generation from their own onsite generation, making them assets to the grid instead of liabilities.”

The utilities and grid operators arguing to keep coal-fired plants online say it makes sense to keep existing baseload power sources operating, at least until more nuclear or renewable energy is available. That’s why states including Nebraska, Virginia, and Utah among others, have plans to keep coal-fired units running to support the supply of electricity.

Virginia is World Data Center Leader 

 

DC Byte, a UK-based research group that tracks data centers worldwide, has said the U.S. is the world leader in the buildout of data centers. The group said Virginia—home to about half of all U.S. data centers—is the largest data center market worldwide. Loudoun County in Virginia is known as “Data Center Alley.”

PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that serves Virginia, the District of Columbia, and 12 other states, has conceded some coal-fired power plants will need to continue operating, and miles of new transmission lines must be built, to satisfy ever-increasing demand for electricity. Other power sources will help—Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. on Tuesday announced it will partner with CEP Solar (based in Richmond, Virginia) to add 1.5 GW of solar and battery energy storage to support data center growth in the region.

“The system is in a major transition right now, and it’s going to continue to evolve,” Ken Seiler, PJM’s senior vice president in charge of planning, said in a December stakeholders’ meeting about how the grid operator can supply more power as it waits for more renewable energy resources to come online. “And we’ll look for opportunities to do everything we can to keep the lights on as it goes through this transition.” 

 

DC Byte in its 2024 Global Data Center Index wrote, “Virginia currently has over 6 GW in the development pipeline including projects under active construction as well as Committed and Early Stage campuses.” The group noted, “Cloud is the greatest driver of growth in Virginia. AWS [Amazon Web Services] operates over 40 facilities in the state and Microsoft operates a massive campus in Boydton as well as a smaller facility in Loudoun County. Both companies have more self-build campuses in the pipeline and are also major colocation tenants across the market.”

DC Byte added, “In 2022, Loudoun County’s primary power supplier Dominion Energy announced that it would not be able to meet power demand in the market. Delays in power delivery are expected until 2025 or 2026 while new power infrastructure is built. In the meantime, Dominion Energy would be providing power incrementally.” Dominion officials have said they project that power demand in the utility’s territory will increase by 85% over the next 15 years. 

 

PJM is backing a $5.2 billion plan for new transmission lines across several states to bring power to Virginia. The lines would carry electricity produced at several coal-fired power plants that have been slated for closure, including the Longview, Fort Martin, and Harrison stations in West Virginia.

In Maryland, meanwhile, PJM has asked Texas-based Talen Energy Corp. to keep Brandon Shores and Herbert A. Wagner—two other coal-fired facilities located near Baltimore—online at least through 2028. The plants had been scheduled to close by June 2025.

Operating Extension for Omaha Coal Plant

The 644-MW North Omaha Station in Nebraska was scheduled to close in 2023. Instead, Google and Meta data centers caused the area’s power demand to spike, which led the Omaha Public Power District to decide that the two coal-fired units at North Omaha were needed to maintain reliability of the local power grid. The utility has said it will keep the coal-burning units online at least through 2026. 

 

One Google data center is in Papillon, a town about 12 miles southwest of Omaha. DC Byte said the Google facility uses more power than the Meta office, and added that its data shows Google uses more electricity in Nebraska than it uses elsewhere in the U.S. The company also is planning more data centers in the state.

Data from Meta and other groups shows that the company’s data center in Sarpy County, about 25 miles southwest of Omaha, last year used almost as much power as the North Omaha station produced. The Meta campus includes nine separate complexes, encompassing about 4 million square feet.

The Omaha Public Power District has estimated that as much as two-thirds of the projected growth in power demand around Omaha will come from data centers, which are being built on what used to be farmland. Local officials have said opposition to wind and solar farms in rural areas has curtailed additional renewable energy resources that could supply power. The utility has been developing a 2,800-acre solar power project in rural York County, about 100 miles from Omaha, but area residents have voiced concerns about the installation. The utility also has said regulatory issues have slowed plans to replace coal-fired generation with natural gas-fired units. 

 

Meta’s presence in Omaha was sought by state and local officials; a special electricity rate for industrial customers was created in 2017. That rate was then marketed to Google to entice the search engine giant to build in the area.

Georgia Courting Data Center Operators

Georgia Power is buying electricity from a sister company, Mississippi Power (both are part of Southern Co.), to help meet power demand in Georgia. The deal came after Georgia Power officials reportedly told state regulators that growing demand for electricity would overrun supply by year-end 2025. Georgia officials have been actively looking to bring data centers and manufacturing plants to that state, and Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this year vetoed a bill that would have suspended a tax break for data centers (the bill had bipartisan opposition). Had the bill become law, the tax break would have been under the review of a special commission on data center energy planning.

Kemp in a statement said, “The bill’s language would prevent the issuance of exemption certificates after an abrupt July 1, 2024 deadline for many customers of projects that are already in development—undermining the investments made by high-technology data center operators, customers, and other stakeholders in reliance on the recent extension, and inhibiting important infrastructure and job development.” 

 

Georgia Power has a deal with Mississippi Power to buy 750 MW of electricity through 2028. Mississippi Power is providing the energy from its Victor J. Daniel Electric Generating Plant, better known as Plant Daniel, where two coal-fired units have operated for the past 50 years. The plant also has two natural gas combined-cycle units. It is the state’s largest power plant, with nearly 1.6 GW of generation capacity, including 500 MW from its two coal-fired units.

Mississippi Power had planned to retire the coal-burning steam turbines in 2027. The deal with Georgia Power, though, could extend that lifecycle. Jeffrey Grubb, the utility’s director of resource planning, reportedly was asked by Georgia Power’s lawyers about the agreement, and said, “Because those units would have been either retired or sold off-system and we needed certainty that they would be there to serve our customers.”

Echols, the PUC co-chair, on Wednesday told POWER the contract with Mississippi Power is open to any kind of generation source. 

 

“Our contract with Mississippi Power calls for 750 MW, and it doesn’t matter where it comes from. That may mean an [operating] extension for the coal plant, or it may not,” he said. “Mississippi could do 750 MW of solar plus storage, they could bring in 750 MW of wind power from a neighboring state.”

Echols noted that a move by regulators in 2022 extended operations for two coal-fired units at Georgia Power’s Plant Bowen, one of the nation’s largest coal-burning power plants, with about 3.4 GW of generation capacity. Echols said, “In the 2022 IRP [integrated resource plan] … our commissioners delayed the closure of units 1 and 2 at Plant Bowen. I imagine as we evaluate that in next year’s IRP, we will also delay the closure for another three years. We’ll have to wait and see what the utility is asking for and how the commissioners feel we need to move forward.”

Echols told POWER, “There could be a massive increase of capacity approved next year. Data centers will account for most of it.” Echols also offered, “I think there is a scenario where we approve two more AP1000 [reactors] at Plant Vogtle if the federal government provides bankruptcy insurance or overrun insurance” for another expansion at the site.

Other Efforts 

 

DC Byte has identified Salt Lake City, Utah, as a growing market for data centers. Meta already operates a 4.5-million-square foot complex in Eagle Mountain, Utah, south of Salt Lake City.

State lawmakers have pushed legislation to keep the Intermountain Power Project, a coal-fired station near Delta, Utah, open past the facility’s scheduled 2025 closure date. Officials have looked at ways to have the state take over the plant. Lawmakers this year did pass legislation intended to extend the life of Rocky Mountain Power’s coal-fired stations in Emery County.

Stuart Adams, president of the Utah Senate, during the legislative session this summer said, “The United States has a real problem. We do not have enough power for our data centers. AI development is technology that we have to embrace, and power is the key to it.” 

 

Building more infrastructure to support that AI development was among the reasons those tech company execs met last month on Capitol Hill. Reports said the discussion included repurposing former coal sites to house data center campuses, in part because those sites usually have access to power lines, water, and a local workforce.

The DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Lab, which is leading the “coal-to-X” redevelopment campaign, in a guide to the program wrote, “A retired coal site could even be redeveloped to combine a data center with new clean energy on the same site.”

As Schurr of Enchanted Rock noted, generating onsite power via a microgrid, or through a renewable energy resource, could be preferable to using coal-fired generation. That’s of particular importance for data center operators looking to build in remote areas where they need plenty of land, and where there’s a lack of transmission infrastructure. 

 

Sonin reiterated that coal will play a role in satisfying power demand from data centers, but like Schurr, noted other fuels could work with coal to reduce the environmental impact of keeping coal-fired power plants online.

Sonin told POWER, “Emerging technologies that, for instance, allow for substituting some of the coal with ammonia, a carbon-free hydrogen derivative, through a process known as co-firing, may help address public environmental concerns. Current advancements, particularly the potential for upscaling production trains, could reduce the cost of ammonia facilities by 30% and more, making this chemical a viable solution for cutting emissions from coal plants.”