Virginia Data Center Intel

Recent Virginia data center news

• May 12, 2026

  Google Signs 500 MW Solar Deal to Power Texas Data Centers

  Google has announced a new 15-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Linea Energy for 500 MW from a new solar project in Texas to support its data center operations.

  • Main announcement: Google signed a 15-year PPA with Linea Energy to purchase 500 MW from Linea’s Duffy Solar Project in Texas; the project will cover 3,526 acres, is co-located with a 235 MWac Duffy BESS, and construction begins Q3 2026.
  • Background and additional details: The power will supply Google’s data centers in the ERCOT market; Google has signed more than 170 agreements for over 23 GW of clean energy since 2010 and recently executed other large PPAs including 1 GW with TotalEnergies and 1.2 GW with Clearway (earlier in the year).
• May 11, 2026

  Comcast Seeks FCC Action in Pole Dispute With Appalachian Power Company

  Comcast has asked federal regulators (the FCC) to step back into a continuing dispute with Appalachian Power Company over utility pole replacement cost charges.

  • Main action: Comcast filed a letter (through law firm Mintz Levin) asking the FCC’s Rapid Broadband Assessment Team to schedule a status conference to resolve the dispute; Comcast alleges Appalachian Power is charging new attachers at least 20% of total pole replacement costs, which Comcast says could delay federally backed BEAD deployments to roughly 13,000 Virginia locations and that lawful incremental costs should be about $100 per pole versus the utility’s formula that could exceed $1,600 per pole.
  • Background/details: The filing references an February FCC ruling that utilities cannot force new attachers to bear full replacement costs for poles with preexisting violations; Comcast originally filed its complaint in November 2025, the FCC fast-tracked the case in December 2025, and Comcast alleges Appalachian Power has continued to refuse compliance and may seek higher payments in future proceedings.
• May 11, 2026 · RMI

  A Fast-Path to Affordability: Understanding the Benefits of Energy-Only Resources in PJM

  RMI (authors Katie Siegner, Sarah Toth Kotwis, Abigail Weeks) commissioned Aurora Energy Research analysis and recommends PJM reform ERIS interconnection pathways to accelerate deployment of energy-only resources.

  • Main announcement/action: RMI highlights Aurora’s finding that deploying 10 GW of ERIS resources (5 GW solar + 5 GW wind) by 2028 could yield ~$10.9 billion in PJM ratepayer savings (billion, 2025$) over the next decade, and urges PJM to create a separate, fast ERIS study track with minimal network upgrade scope and clearly defined short timelines. The analysis assessed IRRs across four PJM zones (AEP, ComEd, Dominion, PPL) using a 9% hurdle rate and assumed no network upgrade costs beyond the point of interconnection for the primary scenarios.
  • Context and details: Aurora’s study modeled ERIS resources (wind and solar) with a 2028 commercial operation date, found ERIS projects are financially viable across most scenarios (central-case IRRs: solar ~9%–10.2%, wind ~9.2%–13.6%), noted ERIS uptake in PJM is currently low (PJM ~1% of MW online ERIS vs much higher elsewhere), and recommended that transmission planning (e.g., PJM’s RTEP) handle broader system upgrades while ERIS studies limit scope to point-of-interconnection impacts.
• May 8, 2026 · RMI

  Solving the Gridlock: America’s Electric Supply Chain Opportunity

  RMI (authors Ellie Garland and Ben Feshbach) publish policy recommendations for federal policymakers to strengthen the US grid supply chain and deploy newly available authorities and funding.

  • Main announcement / action: RMI recommends DOE and Congress use newly available tools — including $375 million appropriated to DOE’s Office of Electricity (Jan 2026) and a Defense Production Act (DPA) determination (Apr 2026) — to boost domestic grid manufacturing capacity, coordination, and competitiveness; the brief cites recent private investments such as Hitachi Energy’s $1 billion factory in Virginia and Siemens Energy’s target to add US transformer capacity by 2027.
  • Background and concrete details: The paper documents current supply constraints: domestic production met only 20% of US LPT demand in 2025, US grid equipment imports exceeded $30 billion in 2024, transformer prices have risen ~75% and cable costs have doubled since 2019; recommended interventions include near-term bottle‑neck relief, tax and loan incentives, DPA/anchor-buying strategies, workforce initiatives, and RD&D pilot programs.
• May 8, 2026

  Episode for May 8, 2026

  Pennsylvania is getting a federal grant to install a geothermal project at an existing natural gas site.

  • Federal grant for enhanced geothermal in Indiana County — The federal government awarded funding to install an enhanced geothermal project at an existing natural gas site in Indiana County, Pennsylvania; the project uses techniques such as fracking to access underground heat and is described as “enhanced” geothermal. (No dollar amount for the grant was specified in the article.)
  • Other local energy and conservation actions — Pennsylvania PUC advanced guidance intended to protect ratepayers from high electricity demand by large data centers; the Pittsburgh Energy Innovation Center (Hill District) installed a rooftop solar array covering >20% of the building’s electricity needs, estimated to be worth $50,000 annually over the next 25 years; a federal critical habitat designation was issued for four endangered freshwater mussel species affecting western Pennsylvania rivers and streams.
• May 8, 2026

  AWS hit by US-East-1 outage after data center thermal event

  Amazon Web Services reported a thermal-event-induced power outage in a Northern Virginia data center (US-EAST-1 use1-az4) on May 7, 2026, that impaired EC2 instances and EBS volumes and prompted traffic shifts and recovery recommendations.

  • Main announcement/action: AWS posted incident updates (first timestamp 5:25 PM PDT) confirming that EC2 instances and EBS volumes hosted on impacted hardware are affected by the loss of power during the thermal event, shifted traffic away from the affected AZ, recommended customers restore from EBS snapshots or launch resources in unaffected zones, and reported incremental progress on cooling by 10:11 PM PDT. Key timestamps: 5:25 PM PDT (issue spotted), 6:47 PM PDT (other services may be impaired), 8:06 PM PDT (progress slower than anticipated), 10:11 PM PDT (incremental cooling progress).
  • Background and other details: The article references prior AWS outages (two US-EAST-1 incidents in October 2025, including a 15-hour disruption tied to DynamoDB DNS automation) and past Ohio power-related outages; it notes that many AWS global services (IAM, CloudFront, Route 53, DynamoDB Global Tables) depend on US-EAST-1 endpoints and cites analyst guidance from Gartner (Bhuvie Chhabra) and Everest Group (Kaustubh K) urging CISOs to reassess physical-layer separation, AZ independence for power/cooling/networking, and regional concentration risk. KoboToolbox’s global instance went offline (00:32 UTC May 8) while its EU instance was unaffected.
• May 8, 2026

  NVIDIA and Schneider Electric get in sync at NVIDIA GTC 2026 to deliver Vera Rubin AI Factories

  Schneider Electric introduced a validated, world’s most comprehensive reference design to support deployment of NVIDIA’s next-gen Vera Rubin AI platform at GTC 2026 in San Jose, California.

  • Main announcement:Schneider Electric (Diamond sponsor) and NVIDIA unveiled a validated reference design for the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks to enable installation and operation of Vera Rubin AI factories; the design includes special drawings, bills of material, schematics, performance specifications, support for rack-scale Vera CPUs and Rubin GPUs, optimized 480 VAC power, and liquid cooling to maximize tokens-per-watt. The announcement was made at NVIDIA GTC, San Jose, CA on May 8, 2026.
  • Background and technical details: The reference design is validated and integrated with Schneider Electric’s controls reference designs and supports operation at MaxQ 188 kW/rack and MaxP 227 kW/rack, supports higher TCS supply temperatures (45°C) for enhanced free-cooling opportunities, references Motivair’s MCDU-70 / 2.5MW CDU liquid-cooling tech, and aligns with Omniverse DSX blueprint work validated at Digital Realty’s AI Factory Research Center in Manassas, VA. Schneider also demonstrated an 800VDC power infrastructure prototype and tested NVIDIA’s Nemotron Agentic AI for alarm management.
• May 8, 2026

  From Capacity to Chaos: How AI Data Centers Challenge the Grid

  Utilities and grid analysts warn that AI-scale data centers are creating new grid stability risks.

  • Main announcement/action:Dozens of data centers in Northern Virginia dropped off the grid in 2024 removing roughly 1,500 MW of load (reported by Reuters); the EIA projects ~2% annual electricity demand growth through 2027 largely driven by data centers, and regions such as PJM and ERCOT report sharp rises in peak demand and large-load interconnection requests. Utilities and analysts (Prithpal Khajuria of Intel and Ron Westfall of HyperFrame Research) say this event highlights that large loads can change in seconds, creating stability and protection coordination challenges.
  • Background and details:Utilities are lengthening interconnection evaluations as modeling must now capture ramp rates, operating modes, UPS/battery interactions, and fault behavior; efforts cited include modernizing substation architecture and improving real-time visibility. The article reports that many data-center developers still treat power as a procurement problem rather than an engineering-system problem, and that protection schemes rely on stable load assumptions which may no longer hold.
• May 7, 2026

  50 States of Power Decarbonization Q1 2026: Lawmakers Tackle Cost Allocation and Ratepayer Protections for Large Load Additions

  The NC Clean Energy Technology Center released the Q1 2026 edition of the 50 States of Power Decarbonization report.

  • Report release & key findings: The Q1 2026 report documents 509 actions taken by 49 states plus Puerto Rico during the quarter and notes more than 600 introduced bills not yet passed. It reports planned capacity additions of 58,276 MW solar, 54,952 MW natural gas, 30,297 MW storage, and 22,358 MW wind, and 30,967 MW of planned coal retirements.
  • Top developments & context: The report highlights top policy developments including the Arizona Corporation Commission repealing the state renewable energy standard, Florida requiring large load tariffs, a North Carolina task force report on large load growth, Virginia rejoining RGGI, and El Paso Electric proposing large load tariffs in New Mexico; the most active states in Q1 2026 were Virginia, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Arizona.
• May 6, 2026

  Power Drives the AI Data Center Boom, but Connectivity Cannot be Overlooked

  An analysis argues that data center operators must prioritize power and optical connectivity for AI.

  • Main point: The piece highlights power and optical connectivity as essential prerequisites for AI, citing Omdia’s forecast that global IT load power capacity will reach 314 GW by 2030 and noting the emergence of the “scale across“ concept (coined in 2025 by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang) which requires 800 Gbps+, low-latency optical links to operate multi-site AI clusters and gigawatt-scale training campuses.
  • Background/details: The article is commentary/analysis (not a formal project announcement). It documents current industry pressures: typical large colocation sites support 50–100 MW, hyperscaler clusters are being planned at gigawatt scale, regional power supply wait times of 2–5 years, and a shift toward remote rural builds (examples: Lancaster PA; Memphis; Columbus, Ohio; rural Georgia; New Mexico; Wyoming) that require long-haul fiber links sometimes up to ~1,000 km. It references trade shows and forums including Metro Connect (Florida), Nvidia’s GTC, OFC, and the Optica Executive Forum.