Richmond's data center boom could raise your power bill
Why it matters: The data center growth could end up costing locals more in their energy bills, according to a recent report from the state watchdog agency.
The big picture: The massive server complexes that allow you to connect to a Zoom meeting or stream videos are driving a surge in electricity demand in Virginia, especially amid the rapid growth of new AI tools.
That's according to a report out late last year from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the state's watchdog group.
If unconstrained, the state's demand for power could double within the next 10 years, JLARC found.
That would likely end up costing Virginia residents, and Dominion Energy customers specifically, $14 to $37 more a month in their power bill by 2040.
Zoom in: Virginia's data center market is still "growing rapidly," and not just in NoVa, JLARC found.
"Significant new market growth is expected in counties outside of Northern Virginia and along the I-95 corridor to Central Virginia," according to the report.
Roughly a third of all data centers in the state are near residential areas, a trend the report's authors expect to continue.
In Chesterfield and Henrico, 38% of data centers are within 500 feet of a residential area, and now some residents have started to fight against proposals to add more near their homes.
By the numbers: There are 53 data centers in the Richmond area, according to DataCenterMap.com.
That's a fraction of the 537 across the state with the vast majority concentrated in Northern Virginia. But it still gives Richmond the second highest concentration of data centers in Virginia, the data center capital of the world.
The latest: Denver-based development firm Tract recently filed an application to rezone 700 acres in Chesterfield to allow for the construction of up to 11 data centers, BizSense reported this week.
The site is next to Chester Solar Technology Park, another data center (and solar energy) project in the works in Chesterfield. It comes from the same development group that last year successfully rezoned 1,200 acres in Hanover for " dozens" of data centers.
Last year, even more data centers were approved in Chesterfield, Henrico and even Powhatan, which okayed a $2.7 billion project to bring the first data centers to that county.
The other side: Data centers aren't all bad, JLARC found. While they tend to only support a small number of long-term jobs after initial construction, those jobs tend to pay well.
Plus, the centers can also pump millions in tax revenue into local economies. Some places, like Henrico, are using the money to help residents by funding an affordable housing trust.
What we're watching: A handful of bills attempting to regulate data centers in the state are still working their way through the General Assembly, including one that would require developers to submit noise and electrical infrastructure studies if being built near homes or schools.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gizmodo
4 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
You Can Buy This Cartwheeling Humanoid Robot for Less Than Two Apple Vision Pros
'Dance for me, robot,' you scream at your mechanical servant from your gilded throne. 'Now flip for me, robot. Fight for me, robot.' That's the future that China-based robotics maker Unitree is offering with surprisingly dexterous bots like the new R1 model. It is nearly as tall as a human, has decals and a mask that remind me of a scaled-up Power Rangers action figure, and is built with AI voice recognition and the ability to do flips. Even with all that, the real surprise is the cost. The Unitree R1 is only $5,900. If that still seems expensive, know that it's actually less than the cost of two $3,500 Apple Vision Pros. The R1 is built with both image and voice recognition AI, according to Unitree. Beyond that, the model is built with a 'movement-first design' for 'dynamic, lifelike mobility.' You can witness the robot's dexterity in a video posted by the company on Friday. The machine can do handstands and cartwheels, punch at the air, and sprint over level ground. It's enough to make me envious of the machine's athleticism, although it doesn't seem to come with any fine finger dexterity, so at least the robots won't be taking my number one spot as king of the high-fives. We've seen other Unitree humanoid and dog-shaped robots in the field, though only in carefully contained demos controlled by an engineer sitting somewhere off to the side. The R1 costs nearly half of the company's previous consumer-end human-shaped bot, the G1. The new design is also far lighter than the previous model, clocking in at 25 kilograms, or 55 pounds, compared to the G1's 77 pounds. If you're looking for specifics, Unitree told us the robot has 26 total joints, with six in each leg, two in the waist, five in each arm, and two in the head. Despite that, the R1 isn't built to become your robo butler. The device is still mostly there for prototyping and testing. That certainly won't stop people from forming their own robot boxing leagues to try and reenact the 2011 movie Real Steel starring Hugh Jackman. Untiree already hosted a fisticuffs tournament with its G1 models earlier this year. Perhaps we won't have to wait long for a bot with a screw loose after taking a shiner to the silicon. There's no R1 listing on the company's store page just yet, so maybe you should cool your jets before dropping close to $6,000 on a new robot. More than pushing a future where the robots fight off the inevitable return of Rita Repulsa, it establishes how far ahead Unitree is compared to the U.S.-based competition. Elon Musk's Tesla is still working to pump out a consumer-end humanoid robot called Optimus. Tesla has tried to promote its bot as a real-life Rosey from the Jetsons. They've had the bot pouring drinks and cleaning dishware, though at a very slow pace and with a human controller standing off-screen. Tesla claimed it plans to produce 5,000 Optimus bots by the end of 2025, but that's looking less likely every day. A new report from The Information states that more than halfway into the year, Tesla has only created a few hundred bots after reportedly halting production in mid-June. Musk recently claimed Tesla will have Optimus gen 3 prototypes available by the end of the year, and then it will scale production. Even if it follows through—which seems less likely considering ongoing staffing and resource issues cited by Fast Company—the robot will likely be nowhere near as cheap as Unitree's bot and its cartwheeling, karate-chop action.
The Verge
5 minutes ago
- The Verge
Google gets its swag back
This week, I take a look at the surprisingly strong state of Google, Meta gets a new chief AI researcher, and more. If you haven't already, be sure to check out this week's Decoder episode about deepfakes and where they are headed. Also, do you use an AI coding tool like Cursor or GitHub Copilot? I'd love to know what works and what doesn't… After spending time with Google executives during the company's I/O conference in May, it was clear that they were feeling confident. Now, I'm beginning to see why. ChatGPT is not making Google Search obsolete. If anything, AI is making Google stronger than before. During Google's earnings call this week, CEO Sundar Pichai announced that AI Overviews in search results 'are now driving over 10-percent more queries globally for the types of queries that show them, and this growth continues to increase over time.' Put simply, when Google works like ChatGPT, people use it more. Pichai noted that this is particularly true for younger people, a demographic that the 10-blue-links version of Google had been losing relevance with for a long time. ChatGPT doesn't appear to be curbing the growth of the Gemini app, either. Pichai said that daily prompts to Gemini increased by over 50 percent from the previous quarter. Gemini now has more than 450 million monthly users, up from 350 million in March. Google processed nearly a quadrillion AI tokens across all its products last month, which is more than double the number it processed in May. Another telling sign of confidence has been Google's reaction to the AI talent wars. 'I look at both our retention metrics as well as the new talent coming in, and both are healthy,' Pichai said on the earnings call. 'I do know individual cases can make headlines. But when we look at numbers deeply, I think we are doing very well through this moment.' While Mark Zuckerberg has managed to poach talented researchers from DeepMind, my sources say that Pichai and Demis Hassabis have been resistant to bidding wars and amenable to letting most people go. Contrast this with the mood at OpenAI, where research chief Mark Chen compared Meta's poaching to the feeling of a home invasion. There's an industry-wide belief that DeepMind's bench is deep enough to withstand defections and that the company can quickly make reverse acquihire moves, such as its recent Windsurf deal, as more AI startups seek refuge from the money-intensive game that only Big Tech seems capable of truly playing. 'Meta right now is not at the frontier,' Hassabis said in an interview with Lex Fridman this week. 'Maybe they'll manage to get back on there, and it's probably rational what they're doing from their perspective because they're behind and they need to do something.' Implicit in that statement is the idea that Google is operating from a position of strength in the AI race, a notion with which all the major players I've spoken with privately agree. Google is by no means unassailable. GPT-5 is coming soon and could blow past Gemini. ChatGPT is the Kleenex of chatbots, and that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon. Meanwhile, Google is sending fewer clicks to websites, which threatens the give-and-take model that has fueled its business to this point. There's a real chance that Google's business may be broken up by the US government. At the very least, it will probably have to stop paying Apple for default status on the iPhone. Even still, AI so far isn't the threat to Google's business that many thought it would be. Instead, it's increasingly looking like Google is stronger than ever. - Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a public memo to employees acknowledging recent layoffs and the company's climbing stock price. - Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a leaked message to employees about seeking funding from the Middle East. - Incoming OpenAI exec Fidji Simo subtly laying the groundwork for ads in ChatGPT. - Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the All-In podcast. - Windsurf's second hire, Prem Qu Nair, on X, describing the way Google hired away the startup's core engineering team. Some interesting career moves this week: More to click on: If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line and all of our reporting. Let me know if you have thoughts on this issue or a good story about the AI talent wars. You can respond here or ping me securely on Signal. Thanks for subscribing. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Alex Heath Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Analysis Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Command Line Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Google Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Meta Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
BONK Drops 9% From Peak as Exchange Transfers Overwhelm Burn News
BONK experienced aggressive volatility over a 24-hour period to end the week, swinging 15% between $0.00003185 and $0.00003763. The Solana-based memecoin initially surged on the heels of a 500 billion token burn announcement before a Galaxy Digital-linked wallet moved $18.75 million worth of BONK to major crypto exchanges, triggering a 9% pullback in under an hour. Despite the reversal, BONK stabilized above the $0.00003400 level with support in the $0.00003185-$0.00003230 zone, according to CoinDesk Research's technical analysis data model. Trading activity surged as speculative flows responded to conflicting signals: bullish supply reduction versus the bearish pressure of potential sell-side liquidity injections. The broader crypto market's shift toward altcoins continued to boost meme token trading volumes as with bitcoin's market dominance weakening. BONK has benefited from increased institutional and retail attention, even as its price action remains volatile and sensitive to on-chain movements. Technical Analysis Highlights BONK moved between $0.00003185 and $0.00003763, a 15% swing. The price dropped 9% from a peak at 15:00 UTC to $0.00003430 by 16:00 UTC. Strong support held at $0.00003185-$0.00003230 amid multiple overnight retests. From 03:00 UTC, the price rallied to $0.00003438, showing short-term stabilization. Between 11:10 and 12:09 UTC, BONK fell 2% to $0.00003433. Reduced volume during final minutes suggests declining bearish momentum. Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk's full AI Policy.
