The need to study data centers

With a large data center proposed to be built on the Millstone nuclear power plant's property and many unanswered questions about the plan, my constituents in East Lyme and residents throughout the region want a data-driven assessment on how a data center would affect Connecticut and its electric customers.

That is why I pushed for new legislation, Senate Bill 299, An Act Concerning Data Centers, in the Energy and Technology Committee, now pending before the General Assembly, requiring the state's Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) in consultation with ISO New England Inc., an independent, nonprofit regional transmission organization, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Office of Consumer Council to study and evaluate the impact that large data centers have on the electric grid, primarily as it relates to reliability and the capacity to support such large users of electricity.

Connecticut's electric grid and its reliability have been a recent topic of conversation as the state debates mandating electric vehicles (EV) by 2035. Some questions need to be asked: What is the capacity of our electrical grid? Does Connecticut need to invest in major grid upgrades? What is a realistic timeline? How would recruiting large-scale data centers to Connecticut affect the grid?

During the public hearing on the legislation, the committee was told that data centers are one of the most energy-intensive building types, consuming 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building. In addition, a data center's load is largely steady given that the facility uses continual energy 24/7. The data center located at Dominion would consume 300 megawatts, which comprises 14% of Dominion's power output.

Data centers like those used by Google, store astronomical amounts of data, with resulting enormous electricity consumption. “If we add up the annual electricity consumption of the world's four most energy-demanding cloud-service operators, that is Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, we obtain 62 million MWh, which is close to the electricity consumption necessary to light the houses of all Americans (62 million MWh).” That demand is increasing exponentially.

I am mindful that these large-scale data centers have become increasingly important to businesses as technology evolves, particularly with the growth of artificial intelligence. However, before Connecticut begins establishing huge facilities throughout the state, the regional grid system must be analyzed and investigated to evaluate if it can handle this enormous additional power demand. These data centers have the potential to disrupt the grid and harm Connecticut's ratepayers, if they are not developed in a proper way. Connecticut's residents are already burdened with among the highest electricity costs in the United States.

Let's not add to that burden by taking a hands-off approach to a project that could have such a huge effect on our grid — and their pocketbooks.