alt Hacker NewsAnd on the flip side, I live in Fairfax County, VA and there are data centers EVERYWHERE. Especially if I cross into Ashburn (home of AOL and stuff) - literally mixed in with large townhome developments.
And the current plan - building a data center in Canaan Valley - is a whopper... 785 MW natural gas power plant on site with diesel generator backups (solely for the data center, not sold back to grid), 500+ acres of land, 2 million sqft initial building space, air quality impact assessment by the state is heavily redacted, $4 billion price tag.
All right next to one of DC's most popular outdoor/skiing recreation areas. The DC would loom over the two towns that support the entire region.
>not sold back to grid)
They'd probably love to sell spare capacity back to the grid but the way interconnection is handled they'd likely be on the hook for a bunch of other upgrades to facilitate that hence why they're not.
You can't "just" add generation to the capacity to the grid without $5-15mil (could be way more but that'll usually torpedo a project) of cost.