Two major players in the data center industry met with members of the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors and the planning commission Tuesday night.
Representatives from Amazon Web Services and Rappahannock Electric Cooperative provided insight into two issues most concerning to county officials and residents — electricity and water usage.
The former consideration proved more unsettling, with REC CEO John Hewa cautioning the board about the amount of power data centers require to operate.
The board of supervisors approved the visit from AWS and REC during an August meeting. The supervisors also requested Dominion Energy, but no representative from the company was present.
John Hewa, the president and CEO of REC, said the Co-op serves 183,000 customers in 22 counties, including 29,600 in Spotsylvania. He said one data center will require as much energy as the company’s entire 22-county, 4,000-square-mile customer-base “on a dark, cold, January morning in single-digit temperatures.”
Hewa said REC’s 183,000 customers achieved an all-time system peak of 1,150 megawatts last January, and there are data centers that requiring more than 1,000 megawatts that are in the works in the region now.
“Today, the Co-op has just right at 20,000 megawatts of data center load ramp requests that have been received through applications,” Hewa said. “Those may or may not all build. Virginia may or may not be able to serve all that.
“Transmission providers such as Dominion or First Energy may or may not be able to build enough transmission to serve that … But we have inbound load requests that would take the Co-op 20 times larger in terms of its peak demand. I want to put that in perspective.”
Hewa said REC now has four affiliate companies — BrillIT, Vividly Bright, Hyperscale Energy Services and Hyperscale Generations — that it hopes will assist in the demand for power. He said the goal is for Hyperscale Generations to eventually produce its own power.
Currently in Virginia, power companies — and Dominion in particular — build new substations and transmission lines to connect data centers to the electrical grid.
Supervisor Deborah Frazier of the Salem District said Hewa’s comments reminded her that county residents need to strive to become more energy efficient.
“We have a responsibility to protect the energy that we have, and I think there needs to be, not just the data center talk, we need to talk globally about ‘What is our responsibility with energy consumption?’” Frazier said. “It’s not just a free-flowing thing that we need to take for granted.”
AWS can build a maximum of 6.6 million square feet of data center in Spotsylvania, but its representatives said the total will likely be less than that.
Board of Supervisors Chair Chris Yakabouski said that, if the company completes half of the maximum permitted, it could generate $30 million to $45 million in revenue for the county, which has a budget this fiscal year of $954.6 million. Yakabouski also noted that AWS’ tax rate in the Fredericksburg area is $1.25 per $100 of assessed value through 2051, much lower than the $4.15 in Prince William. That agreement is with Amazon, so the county is permitted to raise the tax rate on other data center companies.
Yakabouski said that while the county could easily predict revenue for a venture such as a Walmart, it is much more difficult to anticipate the funds data centers will eventually generate.
“I need to nail it down because as I talk to people, they’re wondering,” Yakabouski said. “I don’t want to throw out the numbers I’ve heard because they’re so ridiculous … I want to tamp down expectations. Obviously when they’re higher, we can all be happy that they are, but you’d rather [expectations] be lower than higher.”
AWS representatives told the board that by 2030 the company plans to return more water to communities than it uses in direct operations.
Usman Khan, AWS’ principal water strategist, also told the board and commission that for more than 90% of the calendar year, AWS’ data center campus will be cooled by outside air, and that water is only used for less than 10% of the year, mainly in the summer months.
Khan declined to state the target temperature that would trigger water cooling but said it won’t be often, even on the warmer days.
“For more than 90% of the year, it’s just pulling outside air,” Khan said. “So, only for the very warm hours, it needs a bit of help. So, that’s where water comes into play … That’s why we were one of the first data center developers to use that technology because it allows for that use and minimizes our water usage.”
AWS representatives emphasized that they were only speaking for their company and not the other data center developers who applied to construct campuses in the county.
