For months now, we’ve been beating the drum, warning of the potential negative impacts in Minnesota of the current boom in data centers, large computer server farms supporting AI and other high tech.
Yesterday, Walker Orenstein of the Minnesota Star Tribune performed a useful public service by publishing a deep dive into the subject. His headline,
Mega data centers are coming to Minnesota. Their power needs are staggering.
With at least 10 planned, these Big Tech projects could consume as much electricity as every home in Minnesota.
He’s not kidding. Orenstein includes a map, showing the proposed locations of 10 planned data centers around the state. The first (for Facebook) is already under construction near Rosemount.
Orenstein notes,
Xcel anticipates supplying data centers with 1,300 megawatts in Minnesota and the Dakotas over the next seven years. Great River Energy, a Maple Grove-based nonprofit, is planning 1,000 megawatts of new demand in a similar time frame.
That amount of power demand between Xcel and Great River would be roughly equivalent to Minnesota’s 2.3 million households.
Why Minnesota? Oddly enough, the answer partly lies in our relatively cold weather, minimizing the need for cooling the massive, heat-generating computer server farms. And, as you would have guessed, government subsidies also play a role.
Also, the costs to provide power to these big, new electric customers are being subsidized by the existing customers already on the system.
Here at the Center, our concerns revolve around the potential impact on system reliability and electricity prices of the new data centers.
Environmentalists have their own set of concerns, fearing an explosion in electricity demand would slow down the move to “carbon-free” electricity under state mandates.
We weren’t the first to notice the data center phenomenon. Giving some credit to the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC), the state energy regulators hosted a four-hour conference back on October 29 to specifically address the data center situation.
At the time, environmentalists took comfort from Xcel Energy’s assurances that the 2040 renewable energy mandates would be met. Midwest Energy News Network reported on the event,
A top executive with Minnesota’s largest utility [Xcel] says data center growth will not prevent it from meeting the state’s 100% clean electricity law, but it may extend the life of natural gas power plants into the next decade.
A state energy regulator wasn’t so sure,
Pete Wyckoff, deputy commissioner for energy at the Minnesota Department of Commerce, expressed doubts about the ability to meet unchecked demand from data centers. Even with the state’s recent permitting reforms, utilities are unlikely to be able to deliver “power of any sort — much less clean power — in the size and timeframes that data centers are likely to request.”
Private industry tends to move at much faster pace than government bureaucracy or monopoly utilities.
But who is representing you, the energy consumer?