Keep pulling the thread on The Data Centers Are Coming.
The Vantage data center in Loudoun County, Virginia, is the only one in the county with its own on-site power plant and is not connected to the electrical grid.
Greg Pirio alleges that Vantage misled the community during the planning process by not disclosing its intention to build an on-site power plant and by initially presenting plans for a significantly smaller facility.
Elena Schlossberg asserts that data center companies use non-disclosure agreements with local and state government planning staff to keep their development projects hidden from the public.
Elon Musk is planning to build the world's largest data center in Memphis, which is projected to consume two gigawatts of power.
The wait time for a new data center to get connected to the electrical grid in Loudoun County, Virginia, is currently seven years.
Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia contains 26 million square feet of data center development.
Anthropic used the book "How to Resist Amazon and Why" to train its AI model, Claude, without consent from the author or publisher.
The Vantage data center in Sterling, Virginia, uses gas turbine engines that can produce noise levels of 70 decibels at a nearby residence, which is in excess of the county code.
Vantage has claimed its Sterling, Virginia data center will be connected to the electrical grid within three years.
Dominion Energy declined a request from a Virginia state senator's office for information on when the Vantage data center would be connected to the grid, citing client confidentiality.
Elena Schlossberg founded the advocacy group Coalition to Protect Prince William County in 2014 to prevent data center development from spreading from Loudoun County.
Early data centers were classified under zoning laws as being equivalent to a retail computer store like Best Buy, which allowed them to be built with minimal oversight.