It’s happening again. Summer temperatures are soaring in much of the South and Midwest this week, straining the electrical grid. Utility operators reached a conclusion that they, and others, have reached before: To avoid blackouts, they may need to boot data centers off the grid.
The Energy Department has obliged, issuing an order that allows Southwest Power Pool, which operates from Montana to Louisiana, to push data centers to use their own backup generators to reduce demand on the grid.
Since May, the Energy Department has issued this kind of emergency authorization six times for PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that covers much of the mid-Atlantic and part of the Rust Belt, and for Southwest Power Pool. Some of those orders extended previous allowances. Collectively, the utilities operate across 30 states and in areas with the highest concentrations of data centers in the country.
Grid operators say this summer’s heat waves have not forced them to use the authority yet. But as the Trump administration pushes unfettered data center development in pursuit of supersizing the artificial intelligence industry, these emergency orders show the limitations facing that agenda.
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The nation’s electrical grids cannot currently sustain such rapid growth.
“It confirms that data centers are significantly increasing demand for electricity,” said Ari Peskoe, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard. “During these extremely anomalous days where demand for electricity is at its absolute peak, there can be challenges to supply enough energy to everyone.”
The Energy Department’s authorizations, known as 202(c) orders, have generally been used to allow generators to run as much as they can during emergency conditions such as heat waves or cold snaps, when demand for energy is higher than what the grid can comfortably supply, he said. Generators are then exempt from pollution regulations that would otherwise apply.
But now, DOE is allowing grid operators to direct large power users to turn to their own backup generators during heat waves — with grid operators identifying data centers as some of those large loads.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright began sending out those orders for grid operators during a large storm in January.
PJM — which petitioned the DOE for this kind of authorization over the winter, in May and twice in July — said it has not actually implemented the order, and no data centers or other large power users have been required to move to backup generation.
In early July, when PJM’s system set a record for electric demand, the grid operator issued a warning to data centers and other large users to be prepared to switch to backup generators within 15 minutes, but they didn’t ultimately need to take that step.
SPP, the other utility that has received emergency permission to put data centers on backup generation this summer, also said it has not used that authority yet. If weather conditions improve this week as expected, SPP says it anticipates returning to normal operating conditions.
The orders are “probably a win-win,” Peskoe said. It may cost data centers to turn on their backup generators, but it’s a way to avoid outages and any associated public relations nightmares.
There are downsides, however. Backup generators emit more emissions than power from the grid does. Turning to them could result in more pollutants in the communities where data centers are located.
The emissions from emergency situations are not counted toward a facility’s emissions limits.
Asking data centers to turn on their generators during heat waves isn’t a long-term solution, said Junbo Zhao, an associate professor of engineering at Dartmouth who studies power systems.
More energy generation and reliance on new grid technologies that help manage congestion could help avoid the kinds of problems grid operators have faced this summer. And, Zhao said, there needs to be more coordination among data centers and grid operators.
“Data centers are operating their data centers, and operators are trying to assess whether data centers are going to affect reliability,” he said. “They don’t have dedicated coordination with each other to improve the efficiency and reliability of the grid.”
Data centers must go through an interconnection process, which is meant to ensure they won’t threaten the grid’s reliability. But the grid isn’t prepared for the number of new, massive energy users that have come online in the past couple of years.
Last week in Virginia, PJM got a taste of the grid-destabilizing power of data centers when a group of facilities in Northern Virginia abruptly unplugged from the grid and transferred to backup power, putting about 3% of electric demand offline and changing the grid’s frequency.
Reuters reported that voltage disturbances extended all the way to Chicago.
To deal with the issue of power-hungry data centers during heat waves and other events that are stressful for the grid, PJM is proposing to create a registry of large energy users that would track where they are and whether they brought their own energy supply to the grid.
During grid emergencies, PJM could force large users to go off the grid and onto backup generators, or to reduce their power use, if they haven’t brought their own generators to the system.
That proposal dovetails with the Trump administration’s push for data centers to bring, buy or build their own power — a strategy to keep the cost of running that infrastructure from being charged to all ratepayers.
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