US Grid Operator PJM Proposes Forcing Data Center Off Grid During Emergencies (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0185023480
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/08/17/1842250/us-grid-operator-pjm-proposes-forcing-data-center-off-grid-during-emergencies
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/pjm-proposes-plan-buy-more-power-data-centers-2026-08-13/
> PJM Interconnection, the biggest U.S. grid operator, proposed on Thursday a new framework that [1]would force data centers to use back-up generators when electricity supply on the grid approaches dangerously low levels. The grid operator's proposal dovetails with President Donald Trump's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a non-binding initiative to protect residential customers from getting saddled with costs related to data center power consumption, PJM said.
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> A new emergency procedure would notify utilities to reduce or transfer the electricity demand from data centers and other large power users ahead of any action that would shut off traditional consumers such as households. PJM said it does not, however, currently have the authority to curtail power to those sites and would require the cooperation of individual state governments.
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> PJM manages the electricity for 67 million people in a territory that stretches from Washington, D.C. to Chicago. Its proposal highlights a growing tension between the rapid expansion of data centers and the ability of the nation's power grid to keep up. If PJM cannot close its supply gap, millions of residents and businesses face an increased risk of blackouts, and the cost of new generation could be passed on to other power consumers.
At its recent capacity auction, PJM hit its $325-per-megawatt-day price cap but still came up about 6.8 GW short of its projected reliability needs.
With rapidly expanding data centers adding pressure to the grid, PJM has also proposed creating a registry to track their locations and power consumption.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/pjm-proposes-plan-buy-more-power-data-centers-2026-08-13/
Careful... (Score:2)
You turn off a data center during emergencies and find it was the one responsible for the 911 system, its going to be a bad day.
Re:Careful... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the 911 system is failing because it's power gets cut, then you need to start imprisoning people, starting from the installation engineer, and, if he has an excuse ("I followed the plan") working up through the design engineer ("my manager told me to cut the backup system") and engineering manager ("I got it three times in writing and here's a video that there's no budget for a backup system") until the members of the board are sitting in Barlinnie and begging to be sent to Alcatraz.
Re: (Score:1)
Engineers? how about board members and CEOs? They are the ones who are responsible for the plans. Don't forget city boards, mayors, and city managers.
Sheesh, whose side are you on?
Re: (Score:2)
Explain why your E911 service requires an AI datacenter at all? Shouldn't that be one of those important things that are left to humans?
Re: (Score:2)
> Explain why your E911 service requires an AI datacenter at all? Shouldn't that be one of those important things that are left to humans?
In literally every other case, we're being told that humans make errors and are far too emotional to do things correctly, and we must trust the machines to do better. I can't see why the computer god believers will feel any differently about the 911 system. Even if that argument makes my skin crawl.
Re: (Score:2)
There are [1]already 911 systems using AI [reddit.com]. The trend will accelerate quickly, until there's enough of a death toll to get some politicians unelected.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1vhkoaf/new_orleans_will_use_ai_to_answer_911_calls/
Jailing your neighbor (Score:2)
That is a recipe for throwing a bunch of cable guys in prison.
I guarantee you if that happens once, nobody with a title above manager will ever have heard of it. "Nine one what?"
Re:Jailing your neighbor (Score:4, Interesting)
> That is a recipe for throwing a bunch of cable guys in prison.
> I guarantee you if that happens once, nobody with a title above manager will ever have heard of it. "Nine one what?"
Things like 911 systems, paid for with public money, do not happen without extensive written records of who did what. Because without that, there's no equipment to install because there's no money to buy it. And tampering with that system [1]results in prison sentences [oc.gov]. Not as often as it should, but it certainly happens.
[1] https://bos1.oc.gov/corruption-files-andrew-do
Re: (Score:2)
> You turn off a data center during emergencies and find it was the one responsible for the 911 system, its going to be a bad day.
Yeah, whether it's true or not, every data center in the nation is going to be rated as necessary emergency services to get around any attempt to pull them off-grid during emergencies. This is creating a small hurdle that will require some extra doo-dad pizzazz to get around at most.
Re: (Score:3)
Why is your 911 system depending on a third party server? Surely you have a backup plan?
Re: (Score:3)
> You turn off a data center during emergencies and find it was the one responsible for the 911 system, its going to be a bad day.
That's a design and implementation issue. If the data center doesn't have a backup battery or generator and they committed to "five nines" availability, then they are at fault. If they didn't commit to "five nines" availability, but 911 treated at such, then that is a problem on the 911 system.
Emergency systems should be able to operate in a "dumb mode" and in the absence of grid power. If that means throwing more humans to support the situation, then so be it. In the end these systems are meant to be servi
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't have to be 911. "Emergency" here means "too many people running their air conditioners." So all the electronic payment terminals, cloud software, and the web goes down. And Netflix. People will love it.
Re: (Score:2)
If it's an AI data center (which is generally what people are concerned about the massive growth of) responsible for 911, then you're going to have a bad day whether powered or not.
Re: (Score:2)
That is the whole point though! The datacenters don't go offline. They have their own generating plant for backup power. Obviously that isn't going to be as efficent environmentally or cost wise compared to grid scale power generation.
However, it is similarly not efficent to scale the grid to handle corner case capacity situations like a transient switching failure or a plant needing to go offline for emergency maintenance all while maintaining current loads when there are whole bunch of loads that represen
Good timing! (Score:2)
For Sherrod Brown.
Re: (Score:2)
wrong thread...
Some ideas: (Score:2)
0) It was once in Florida that commercial users who exceeded an agreed-upon load during certain hours were essentially fined for that, with that fine, increased rates, lasting up to a year. Many shopping malls in particular used onsite generators to run their A/C systems in very hot weather,. which both depleted their ice banks and, coincidentally, caused higher residential demand etc. Worth it to avoid the surcharges. Datacenters may want to invest in onsite generators to be used not just for backup and re
Re: (Score:2)
"commercial users who exceeded an agreed-upon load during certain hours were essentially fined for that"
Can you ask your favorite AI about Microsoft burning off energy in a Quincy datacenter to avoid a fine for not meeting contractual minimum usage requirements?
Re: Some ideas: (Score:2)
'load shedding'. 'service prioritization'.
How many ways are there to reduce power consumption in a statement, before turning off servers. Oh, wait, in addition to turning off servers...? Reduce the cloud population, reduce power, but reduce performance. What would the utilities be offering for responding to unsupported demand, even for an unplanned supply outage? I don't read a lot about these options. Even rejecting them.
Out of the box (Score:2)
I propose a retour a la nature. Whenever there is excess solar and wind energy, datacenters can throw a big party. People have to work overtime. When there is little sun and wind, datacenters shut down and we all get a holiday.
If you want this to happen, vote for me! I will make it all happen. Pinky swear!
Or just pollute all the time like Musk does (Score:1)
Musk's data center near Memphis, KY has been illegally using [1]pollution-producing methane-gas generators since day one [theguardian.com] even though he said they would be temporary. He does not have a permit for these generators and conveniently, the site is located near a poorer section of Memphis.
Needless to say, the EPA has not done anything about this even with its own decision of illegality.
No need to switch to generators when you can use them from day one and not have to worry about doing anything under the c
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk-xai-datacenter-memphis
Re: (Score:2)
Even if they don't pollute all the time, consider when a "power emergency" will be most likely. One common situation is when there is a stagnant heat dome sitting on the area forcing everyone to crank up their A/C.
Then the data centers will fire up their gas and diesel generators with short exhaust stacks, and with no wind all those fumes will just linger in the general vicinity.
Re: (Score:2)
So do I have this right? Does air conditioning cause more heat domes, the solution to which is more air conditioning?
Re: (Score:2)
It's not causation, but correlation. The times that the grid open goes down are during extremely hot weather, which is the same time AC is needed (which overloads the grid) and during extremely cold weather (same time electric heat is needed). Extreme weather is the problem, along with underspecked grids and CEOs/politicians who permit loads on the grid which we all know the grid cannot support.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you just get whooshed, while Copilot saw the point?
"Air conditioning contributes to global warming through electricity consumption and refrigerant leakage, and globally it accounts for roughly 4% of total greenhouseâ'gas emissions today, rising to 8â"10% by midâ'century without efficiency improvements. In hot regions, AC can be one of the largest single drivers of peak electricity demand."
Mixing units again (Score:2)
"At its recent capacity auction, PJM hit its $325-per-megawatt-day price cap but still came up about 6.8 GW short of its projected reliability needs. "
There we are again, mixing units. megawat-day is a unit of energy, GW is a unit of power.
(I have never heard of megawatt-day before, but presumably it is 24 megawatt-hours)
Re: (Score:2)
At least they're using units that we (the world) can recognize, and not something like tera-bald-eagles-power or something based on body parts of a random dude.
Datacenters should be net generators (Score:2)
Datacenters should be net generators at the point the wholesale electric prices hit anything close to what a US consumer is actually paying for the power part of their bill in nominal circumstances. There is no point in participating in the global tech brah workload when the power costs are double, quad or 10x the normal rate, there is always somewhere cheaper in the world for the cost of Latency. The whole regulatory environment has large customers paying almost nothing for power consumption that is curt
Re: (Score:2)
The obvious solution here is to run the data centers in reverse. Basically feed them long winded manipulative slop, and have them convert it into the original art. This will mean the centers will then start generating power instead of using it up.
It's so obvious I can't believe nobody's thought of it before. We could probably solve global warming if we did this.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe we should demand the tech brahs pay for home solar and storage.