Data Centers Hiding In 'Spy Country' Northern Virginia Will request Reactor’s Worth Of Power

Since the beginning of the digital age, most of the world’s net data has flowed through massive data centers in Northern Virginia. The area is known as ‘Data Center Alley’ due to the fact that it’s home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers. any call the area 'spy country' due to the number of data centers utilized by the Central Intelligence Agency and another intelligence agents.

Given the exponential proliferation of smartphones, streaming services, smart devices, and now generic atomic intelligence, the power required by data centers in Northern Virginia will request atomic reactors worth of power, if not much more, according to the utility Dominion Energy.

On Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Bob Blue told investors on a company learnings call that “economic growth, electrification, and accelerating data center expansion” is boosing power request across the area.

Blue said, ‘The data center manufacture has grown increasingly in northern Virginia in fresh years,’ noting, ‘We’ve connected 94 data centers with over 4 gigawatts of capital over the last approximatley 5 years.’

Blue effects his utility company to connect another 15 data centers to the local power grid this year.

He said, "This growth has Accelerated in orders of magnitude, drive by one, the number of data centers requesting to be connected to our system, two, the size of each facility, and three, the acceleration of each facility's ramp scheduled to scope full capacity."

He provided any context about rising power demand, pointing out:

‘A single data center typically had a request of 30 megawatts or great. However, we’re now receiving individual requests for request of 60 to 90 megawatts or great, and it hasn’t stopped there. We get regular requests to support larger data center campuses that include multiple buildings and require full capital ranking from 300 megawatts to as many as respective gigawatts.”

Blue told analyses that Loudoun region is home to the “largest data center marketplace in the world, and we have had an chance to work with our data center customers for 15 or more years.”

He said the electricity of the environment, in combination with data centres, will only mean ‘substantial burden growth drive by electrification in data centres for the forecastable future.’

With crucial burden growth coming down the pipe, the local media outlet The Frederick News-Post reported earlier this year that billions of dollars in “regional power grid upgrades” are being proposed to “increase data center power demands in Northern Virginia.”

Recent, media outlet LoudounNow Reported that "hunger for energy continues to grow, especially in the data center manufacture with fresh large-scale projects adding hundreds of megawatts of demand." The paper said that this has led government officials to propose “small modular reactions.”

Putting this all together plays into our latest investing theme, 'taking up America' and the upgrade of the nation’s grid for AI data centers, electrification of the economy, and reshoring of manufacturing. In titled the notes "The Next AI Trade" and "Everyone Is Piling Into The Next AI Trade." atomic will be a large part of power generation as it’s the only clean and reliable origin for data centers, as Blackrock’s Larry Fink pointed out last week.