Markell data center/power plant post
For the record, I’m not at all swayed by the “if this had been a Republican Governor” appeal below. The fact is I don’t know much about this issue, but trust the DL community to bring the pertinent facts to light.
This is not so much of a tip as it is as a request for DL to air the issues of The Data Centers, LLC. that is proposing to build a 248MW power plant at the old Chrysler site in Newark. I feel that if this had been Ruth Ann Minner or a Republican governor, the governor’s support for this project at this early stage would have been addressed on this site. Plus, Markell is supporting something with such a specious premise: TDC can’t make enough money running a data center so they also want to be a power plant? Huh? And without PSC review (and public process) because its a cogen facility. Nice.
What I think needs to be aired are the real issues behind why TDC is building the power plant. Its not because they need the power (there are 3 high voltage transmission lines that serve the site), but because they are depending on revenue from power sales. Yet Markell tries to sell the proposal as “necessary” for the data center. All in the name of jobs. Same arguments he trotted out to reopen the Delaware City Refinery Corp (PBF). Unsurprising considering that TDC is being represented by Markell’s former Deputy Chief of Staff who was point person on PBF. Its a bad plan for Newark and its hard to understand why there doesn’t seem to be much on this site about it. Thanks for considering.
Timeline as shared at public meeting by The Data Centers, LLC
2006 began working on project
2009 CEO went on full-time onto project
2011 formed Data Centers LLC
Jan. 2012 Met with UD Science Tech & Advanced Research Campus Officials
Feb. 2012 Met with Office of Gov
Feb. 2012 Met with DEDO
July 2012 Met with City of Newark (Note: Confidentiality agreement signed and elected officials not included in meeting)
December 2012 Signed 75-year lease with “UD”
May 2013 Met with DNREC
June 2013 Met with Sierra Club of DE
September 2013 Public Session
I run a data center that is less than 100 yards from a power plant. It’s a great way to keep data center operating costs down and reliability high.
No transmission line power loss.
No need to buy power from other sources.
Minimal risk due of power outages.
A typical modern server requires about 500 Watts to run and cool, and a large computer room will have thousands of those.
From a computer room design perspective, a power plant nearby is HIGHLY desirable, and as such, it’s rather common.
With a proper design, the heat produced by all the computers can be part of the cogeneration plant for additional savings. This is done at the NCSA.
Hold on a sec. There is enough heat from cooling data center computers to create steam to turn turbines?
I don’t buy that. Water has to get to 212°F to start to be hot enough to create steam, and I’m no computer guy – but no computer I’ve ever heard of operates at 212°F.
As for the rest of it… With Blue Water, the Delaware City Refinery, and the port privatization deal under the Governor’s belt – people have a right to be skeptical of this project.
Heat is heat. You can use one heat gradient to create another heat gradient. How do you think gas powered refrigerators work?
In the case of the NCSA, they use the heat from the computers to help heat the rest of the buildings on campus.
Here’s one definition of cogeneration:
“the generation of electricity and other energy jointly, esp. the utilization of the steam left over from electricity generation to produce heat.”
The goal is to produce heat…
Here’s a hint: Water also has to be heated from ambient temperature to 212 F on it’s way to becoming steam.
Here’s another hint: The temperature at which water turns to steam varies greatly depending on the pressure at which the steam generator operates.
Nancy Willing has been great on this issue, which is why I haven’t touched it.
So because Markell took risks that didn’t work out, we should turn down a project that offends because it’s noisy.
That’s the only legitimate argument against this that I can see. Given that it will be built somewhere, global warming arguments are irrelevant.
Global warming arguments aren’t irrelevant. Efficiency is the real question in my mind. You can often gain great efficiency with scale. If this is an inefficient plant (I have no idea if that is the case) then it will create more CO2/MW than a larger plant somewhere else.
Also, there are other NIMBY concerns than noise, like local air quality, local traffic increase, property values, etc. There is a reason that we locate power plants in distant locations and run large transmission lines hundreds of miles.
Two quick comments–the current open issue is that by charter, no one may produce/sell electricity in the city limits other than the city/DEMEC, except 1) for backup and then only when the grid is down, and 2) for net metering solar panel systems. This could be a make/break issue, although it is highly likely city council, if they so choose, could provide an exemption, by an affirmative vote. It is this potential city council approval possibility that is encouraging the community to speak up, both opponents and proponents.
Second, the technology that TDC plans to use is the latest/greatest for natural gas plants, and efficiency is desired, both for their profit implications and for the environmental impact. I suspect that the scale of this project, and its electricity generation capacity, increased significantly (more than twice the current needs of the city–this is a major electricity production facility) over the past 18 months, due to the scale benefits which LG mentioned.
It’s a natural gas burner, so it’s as clean as anything out there now. Also, we try NOT to run transmission lines any further than necessary, because you lose power with every foot of wire. If it’s efficiency you want, on-site production by a natural gas burner is about as efficient as you’re going to generate power at that scale.
On any other NIMBY issue than noise, the answer is simply that this was an industrial site until a few years ago. Property values already reflected that.
If you’re looking for a case in which an empty industrial site is being re-purposed poorly, the old Vlasic plant on Indian River is being replaced by a chicken processing plant. That will adversely affect water quality throughout the bay.
I would be surprised if all natural gas burners are created equally. The larger the plant, the more efficiently it can be built. Like Paul said, they seem to be ramping the production up to get better performance.
I get that there is loss on long-distance lines, but it is a relatively simple calculation to figure that loss out compared to the efficiency loss of a smaller generator.
Like Liberal Elite, I work in a data center. Our backup generators generate enough noise that our monthly tests of them warranted a visit from a politician who represented a nearby neighborhood. Apparently the noise was annoying enough that the constituents were complaining about 7AM tests on the weekend.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that noise is something that can be reduced.
@ Geezer “If you’re looking for a case in which an empty industrial site is being re-purposed poorly, the old Vlasic plant on Indian River is being replaced by a chicken processing plant. That will adversely affect water quality throughout the bay.”
Evidence or opinion?
Noise can be reduced, but how you do it can have some interesting consequences.
Paul knows this better than I do, but one of the ideas mentioned was to install berms around a portion of the site. However, installing berms near the railroad tracks would result in increasing the noise from trains passing through Newark.
So there’s always the problem of unintended consequences.
Meatball: I see regular missives about this plant from a woman fighting it named Cindy Wilton, who has written numerous letters to editors about it. If you think about the difference between brining cucumbers vs. gutting and bleeding chickens, you can see that the latter involves a lot more waste products than the former. I have not looked up scientific papers on the subject, so I can’t give you primary-source data.
Mediawatch: Noise barriers seem to work pretty well along highways. Why can’t they erect some on the neighborhood side of the tracks?
Geez: that makes sense to me, but I don’t think the north side of the tracks is UD property.
MW: Yeah, I’m sure there are logistical difficulties that I don’t know about. I just think these are problems with solutions.
Regarding this being an industrial site, I would note that there are other potential industrial uses that could have happened here that don’t involve a power plant. In fact, there was a possibility a few years ago for a green manufacturing industry use. The issue there was that UD has eminent domain rights over both privately owned land and even city-owned land, so even before UD owned the site, UD expressing interest meant no one else would move forward…
The problems between the city and the university are certainly part of the situation here. So what? The issue is whether we want to turn down a relatively benign use of the land for a valuable industry.
If this doesn’t meet the NIMBY standard for approval, what would?
I still recall a company that wanted to bring 500 white-collar paper-shuffling jobs to a former elementary school up in Brandywine Hundred. It was shot down because the neighbors had gotten used to walking their dogs there in the years the school was closed.
Actually, I would guess that simply building a data center would be totally fine with the residents and city of Newark. It is the “incidental” power plant that they have decided to build in conjunction with it. Power generation by burning fossil fuels is never benign.
I am trying to rack my brain for another data center in the area that has its own power plant and I am coming up empty, even at DelMarVa/Connectiv.
Here are a few other things that have not yet been mentioned in this discussion:
1. In order for this company to acquire this much natural gas, a gas line is going to have to be built, most likely going through the protected area of White Clay Creek State Park.
2. Data Center LLC has only eight employees, none of whom has any experience building a power plant. It might be a good idea to know who has the money behind this purposed plant and why the Markell administration was so eager to put out taxpayer money for a pipeline. This isn’t some company with a track record that has already been given approval.
3. The U. of DE is a leader in solar energy research. So why isn’t there any tie-in with any of these projects on the STAR campus?
4. Natural gas is relatively cleaner than coal, but that doesn’t mean that it’s really clean. It’s ironic that Markell effectively banned fracking in the Delaware River Valley basin, but both the Bloom boxes and this co-generation plant would be running on gas obtained by fracking. I guess if it’s coming from some other river basin, then environmental damage is OK with Markell and Levin.
“Power generation by burning fossil fuels is never benign.”
This company will be using power generated by fossil fuel no matter where it locates. Therefore it has nothing to do with this particular site.
“I guess if it’s coming from some other river basin, then environmental damage is OK with Markell and Levin.”
We take on plenty of environmental atrocities from other jurisdictions (e.g. DuPont’s ExStation incinerator and Chambers Works). This one alone won’t even it out, so forgive me for not caring much.
The issue isn’t whether this will be built. It’s whether it will be built in Newark, elsewhere in Delaware, or another location altogether.
As to #3, who says there won’t be?
@lg “Like Liberal Elite, I work in a data center. Our backup generators generate enough noise…”
Our power plant makes far less noise than our backup generators, and generates far more power. The power plant is indoors. The backup generators are outdoors.
I think there is also another larger issue at play here; the fact that both the state and UD exempts their projects from local building codes and ordinances which are designed specifically to protect public health and safety. If you remember, the UD also constructed a utility scale wind turbine at their Lewes campus, with no public process. According to the after the fact NEPA process (UNHEARD OF by any fed I know), many of the public participation opportunities were “lectures” and “coast day.” Concerned residents had no recourse – the Feds failed them, the state failed them, the town failed them and the university failed them.
The exemptions may have been fine 50 years ago, when UD was building dining halls and dorms and classrooms, but these new projects go above and beyond. At least with a state project, citizens have FOIA rights. UD has refused to release pertinent information about the STAR campus project. UD is a state agency when it benefits them, and a private corporation when it benefits them. So, the end result is that UD doesn’t have to adhere to a public process that any walgreen’s expansion would have to adhere to, gets to build a massive structure with impacts felt well outside of the property, and doesn’t have to respond to FOIA. Sweet deal.
I don’t know much about why the state and University are exempt from local ordinances, but it might be time for a progressive legislator to look into it and fix what’s broken.
PS – Harker serves on the Board of Directors of Pepco, one of the largest power companies in the Mid-Atlantic. How will he and this company benefit from the extra power generated at this site?
The real irony in my mind is that this dates center is not using Bloom boxes. The data center needs its own base load generation so that its servers never go down. Bloom produces just such a product on the same STAR campus. The fact that this company wants to build a very big natural gas generation facility instead tells me that Bloom is either way too expensive (or not efficient enough) or the company wants to sell excess generation back into the grid.
The real irony here is Newark thinking it is going to get something out of this deal other than screwed. Go look at the power agreement the city signed this year with UD at the behest of their city manager and mayor who negotiated it (http://www.cityofnewarkde.us/DocumentCenter/View/3782). Look closely at paragraph 5 on page A-3. If Newark signs a deal to let this power plant sell back to the grid (and from everything I understand TDC’s business plan, together with their ability to get funding to build this thing, turns on selling its excess power to DEMEC along with monetizing C02 recovery, selling steam to UD, etc.) UD gains the right to buy any amount of power from that plant at 1% above Newark’s cost. So the city either cuts its own throat by going ahead with this or puts the knife into UD’s hands so they can do it when they wish. Or threaten to if the city won’t take the tug on the leash and come to heel when told. And UD gets to subsidize TDC at the same time.
Now let’s reflect for a moment on this bit of wisdom: “The way it works is you don’t put every new development up to a public vote,” Gov. Jack Markell said last week. “This is why you have environmental regulations, and this is why you have land-use regulations.” Thanks Jack. I feel sooooooo much better.
@Geezer:Wait a second. So because property values bordering neighborhoods were already depressed by proximity to a brownfield and the industry that was there before, we should let them be further eroded by building a power plant there? That’s cold.
“we should let them be further eroded by building a power plant there? That’s cold.”
Prove that they will be “further eroded” (the industry was there before the houses) by substituting a data center with its own power plant than it would by an auto plant. Ought to be easy to do with real estate data.
The only study that has been done on this question (I don’t have the cite to hand but I’ll look it up) that I know of only looked at very low population density areas since most power plants tend to get built in very low-density areas (Newark is something like 3600 people per square mile I think, definitely not low density). That study found an average 3-7% decline in values of homes up to two miles from the power plant with evidence that the decline was greater for homes within one mile. What will happen in a high density area I don’t know. But I have every reason to expect it is not going to increase their values. As you yourself observe, the market prices will reflect the presence of the power plant as they did the brownfield/previous development.
Remember that most of those power plants are much bigger than the one proposed for the data center. There’s a big difference in being a mile from the Indian River complex vs. a mile from this one.
I can’t get a listing book at the moment, but from what I see online homes in The Binns are selling for about $190,000. So a 3% drop in value would equal about $6,000. That would suck for people who own homes there, of course, but that’s not a big enough price drop to stick out above the background noise of price variations for other reasons. If it’s 7%, then you’re talking $14,000, a much bigger bite, but I have a hard time believing every home in that neighborhood would drop that much just because there’s a power generation plant across the railroad tracks.