Check out Enchanted Rock's white paper on 'Cleaner power for California communities: Solving the state’s diesel proliferation problem'! #DataCenters #Energy #Utilities
Amazing paper from Enchanted Rock. It shows that folks who need backup power but choose the lowest first cost are buying record amounts of diesel generators throughout the two largest air quality districts in California. Their analysis showed that from 2018-2021 there was a 34% increase in the number of diesel backup generator permits issued in the SF Bay Area, representing a gigawatt of power. Similarly, in the LA Basin, the same time period had a 22% increase in the number of permits and 4.5GW increase in power. This is an issue that is not limited to just the Bay Area and the Los Angeles basin in California, it is happening in every State in the United States. Subsequent research shows that a number of diesel permits approved by Virginia Department of Environmental Quality from 2022-2025 increased diesel generator capacity by 260% as compared to the permits approved in the twenty-one-year period between 2000 – 2021 -- and many of those are at data centers that have to run these generators creating air quality problems every August in Northern Virginia. Diesel backup generators are not even great solutions. As these data centers get bigger you can't even store 24 hours of fuel so an extended outage would require frequent refueling over roads. Low emission simply cycle or piston natural gas generators are readily available to meet the same emergency purpose but also are able to broadly contribute to grid resilience. You can also use batteries that can double as a way to reduce electricity bills for all of their neighbors on a daily basis.