AP: Virginia, Amazon announce $35 billion data center plan

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Virginia, Amazon announce $35 billion data center plan

By MATTHEW BARAKAT today


FILE - Spencer Snakard, president of Protect Fauquier, speaks Aug. 29, 2022, at a rally near Manassas, Va., protesting a newly built data center for Amazon Web Services. AWS plans to invest $35 billion in new data centers in Virginia under a deal with the state, Youngkin announced Friday, Jan. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Matthew Barakat, File)


ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Amazon Web Services plans to invest $35 billion in new data centers in Virginia under a deal with the state, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Friday. Millions of dollars in incentives to close the deal still require legislative approval, but General Assembly leaders in both parties expressed support in a news release issued by Youngkin’s office.

Still, data centers have become a politically volatile topic, particularly in northern Virginia, where the structures are increasingly common and where neighbors are voicing noise and environmental concerns.

Data centers house the computer servers and hardware required to support modern internet use, and demand continues to increase. But the data centers require high-powered fans and extensive cooling capacity that can generate noise. They also consume huge amounts of electricity that can require construction of high-voltage transmission lines to support them. Bills proposed in the legislature this year would increase regulate where centers could be located.

The governor’s office said the locations of the data centers, to be built by 2040, will be determined at a later date. But tech companies prefer northern Virginia because it is close to the historical backbone of the internet, and proximity to those connection points provides nanoseconds of advantage that are of importance to tech companies that rely on the servers to support financial transactions, gaming technology and other time-sensitive applications.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/technology-data-management-and-storage-amazoncom-inc-virginia-business-c75df1f34069b09549fe15c99335b8fb

I know NoVA has been inundated obviously due to the proximity to D.C. and federal government HQ offices in the city and surrounding suburbs, who have also tended to use AWS for the cloud recently (although MS & Google have been trying to compete in that space along with expensive old-school providers like Oracle, IBM, etc).

I know they were in Reston and apparently expected to have expanded into Herndon - https://www.restonnow.com/2019/07/26/report-amazon-web-services-expands-in-herndon/

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1. There are several in Loudoun County, I believe.

Unsightly, but as my daughter put it, "At least it's not townhouses with cars for more traffic!"

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2. "At least it's not townhouses with cars for more traffic!"

All the trips from here in Philly to my agency's various HQ offices down in MD, allowed me to witness where the townhouses and condos and apartments WERE being built. It's insane.

I remember there was a small hotel that I used to stay at all the time when traveling to Rockville and over the years, I watched how an unused parking lot property that backed to the hotel, was suddenly "filled in" with an entire apartment complex, complete with a multilevel parking garage. This was literally a "back lot" behind the hotel and access was from one of the hotel's driveways that happened to exit to the main thoroughfare.