U.S. regulators consider the issue of data centers in power plants
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission held a technical meeting on Friday to discuss the reliability and cost concerns associated with the growing trend of building data centers that are energy-intensive on the site of U.S. nuclear power plants.
The technology industry is racing to build data centers to support technologies such as generative artificial intelligence. However, accessing the huge amounts of electricity required for these centers quickly has become a major problem.
Co-location, the arrangement that connects data centers to power plants directly, is a quick way to get large amounts of energy, without having to wait in long queues for years to be connected to the grid.
Willie Phillips said, "I think that the federal government and this agency should do the best they can to nurture and promote their development," adding that he believed the AI centers to be vital for national security and to the economy of the country.
Co-located data centers have raised concerns about the impact on power bills of everyday customers. This is because they use grid infrastructure and public services. The co-located centers also raise reliability concerns, primarily because they divert power from the grid, or could potentially drain electricity from the system, if a neighboring power station goes down.
Does the customer still get to draw electricity from the grid?" If it is, then that will have a big impact," said Mark Christie.
The technical conference may lead to new guidelines on who pays for certain costs associated with co-located data centres and how they are managed.
FERC also is gathering information on a battle between electric utilities and Amazon over the co-location of a data center in a Talen Energy Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania. Exelon, American Electric Power and Talen Energy are opposing Talen's agreement to interconnect the data center. FERC could establish a precedent that would allow similar agreements. (Reporting and editing by David Gregorio; Laila Kearney)
(source: Reuters)
