Dive Brief:
- The North American Electric Reliability Corp. on Monday issued a rare Level 3 alert — the watchdog’s highest level — following instances of data centers unexpectedly dropping load or oscillating demand rapidly, creating reliability concerns. The alert includes seven actions grid entities “must implement to address immediate risks posed by computational loads,” NERC said.
- Transmission planners and operators, system planners and balancing authorities are among the entities that must act. The required actions address the modeling, study, operation, protection and control of computational loads, including artificial intelligence training and cryptocurrency mining.
- “The grid faces unprecedented challenges from a surge in large power consumers,” NERC said in a statement. Summer peak demand across the bulk power system is expected to rise 24% in the next 10 years, with data centers accounting for most of the increase, the organization said in its most recent Long Term Reliability Assessment, published in January.
Dive Insight:
In the face of rising data center loads — and instances where they unexpectedly disconnected from the grid — NERC issued a Level 2 warning last year that elicited alarming responses from grid stakeholders, the reliability watchdog said.
“Entities generally did not have sufficient processes, procedures, or methods to address emerging computational loads,” NERC said in its Monday warning. The essential actions NERC calls for include the following:
- Transmission planners and planning coordinators should develop a detailed list of modeling data, settings, and parameters needed from computational loads and distribute this to transmission operators in their footprint. Transmission operators should reflect this information in their facility interconnection requirements.
- Transmission planners and planning coordinators should collect data from computational loads such as the expected minimum and maximum consumption in megawatts and the percentage of IT load vs. non-IT load (cooling, for instance), at various load levels.
- Planning coordinators should revise definitions that trigger a review of local area protections, stability limits and other reliability studies to account for computational loads.
- Transmission operators should establish a “commissioning process” for computational loads.
- Where possible, the commissioning process transmission operators develop should include testing facilities at full load and at no load, and, if possible, with at least a 10% change from nominal voltage.
- Transmission operators should install and utilize dynamic fault recording devices to understand computational load facility electrical performance during system disturbances.
Registered NERC entities must acknowledge receipt by May 11 and must respond by Aug. 3.
Level 3 alerts, which are rare, call for grid operators to take specific steps in response to an immediate issue. NERC last issued a Level 3 alert a year ago regarding possible grid disruptions related to inverter-based resources. Solar, wind and battery resources have been known to trip offline during grid disturbances.
Grid instability issues caused by data centers "could become quite severe — to the the point of creating widespread blackouts," Ben Inskeep, program director for the Citizens Action Coalition, told Utility Dive in an email.
"It is critical that we have standards in place to protect all ratepayers from negative impacts to grid stability, reliability, and resiliency that are caused by data centers, especially given the rapid proliferation of these mega users across the country," Inskeep said.
NERC’s efforts to better align utility and data center operations may take longer than anticipated, Digital Power Optimization CEO and founder Andrew Webber told Utility Dive. The company builds and manages data centers.
“It will take years of coordinated effort in the drafting of new regulations, understanding limitations and opportunities related to physical equipment, understanding limitations and opportunities related to software and control systems, re-prioritizing various loads all throughout society, etc.,” Webber said in an email.
He pointed to recent comments by Laura Swett, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, about a lack of communication between data centers and energy regulators.
“Given the absolutely critical need [for data center developers] to source power for their developments, I found it quite interesting that FERC isn’t seeing more direct engagement from the data center industry,” Webber said. “I think it exemplifies the challenges NERC is also going to face in getting genuine buy-in and wholehearted acceptance by the data center industry as it pertains to grid reliability.”
“New evaluation paradigms will need to be created and worked through in partnership with the data center industry,” he said.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to include comment from the Citizens Action Coalition.
