The Pacific Northwest faces major load growth from data centers, but near-term expansion will be limited by existing power supply and transmission capacity, according to Brian Janous, chief commercial officer at Cloverleaf Infrastructure and former vice president of energy at Microsoft.
However, there are measures that can unlock existing system capacity, Janous said Wednesday during a briefing on data centers for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. “If I'm a grid operator, what are the things I can do between now and 2030 to unlock incremental capacity on my system … with things like grid enhancing technologies and storage?”
The briefing was part of the NPCC’s preparation for its next 20-year regional power plan for Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Washington. The council aims to issue a final plan in late 2026.
The NPCC expects data center and chip fabrication energy use in the Northwest to grow to 34.8 million MWh by 2029 under a “mid-case” scenario, up from roughly 4.4 million MWh this year, according to a power supply adequacy assessment released in August. However, tech sector use could be as high as about 57 million MWh, the council said, noting it is unclear how much load will materialize.
Is load forecast too low?
The council’s mid-case estimate is likely too low, Robert Cromwell, a power sector consultant who told the NPCC there is significant “tire kicking” by data center and other large load developers looking for Northwest utilities that can meet their needs. “They are going to all land somewhere, and the region needs to be ready for that,” Cromwell said.
While the exact load requirements for future data centers is uncertain, AI, one of their main drivers, isn’t a passing trend because of its usefulness in processing huge amounts of data, according to Janous. “AI is very real because it addresses a very important utility across any number of sectors,” he said. “We have an almost unlimited capacity at this point for consuming data and computation.”
Further, increased efficiency by data center technology won’t reduce data center power use because data center operators will add more computing capacity to take advantage of the efficiency, according to Janous.
Cromwell warned that the risk of underestimating load is graver than over predicting it. “The risk of over forecasting and the load coming in below that is vastly lower than under forecasting, and having loads come in that can't be met, whether you want to talk about it operationally, politically … the risk asymmetry here is real,” Cromwell said.
The Northwest needs to build unprecedented amounts of transmission to meet the region’s needs, Cromwell said. The consultant suggested the region’s governors enter into a compact to establish a single siting process for interstate transmission, pointing to the 17-year development process for the ongoing 500-kV Boardman-to-Hemingway power line between Idaho and Oregon.
Despite misgivings by the public power utilities in the Northwest, a regional transmission organization would be the most efficient option for managing the regional grid, according to Cromwell.
A regional RTO in the West would boost data center development, according to Janous. “It would make it easier to invest in the region, because you wouldn't be dealing with the complexity of the system as it exists today,” he said.
Transitioning gas units to backup gen
Co-located gas-fired power plants built to serve data centers could transition to being backup generators, replacing diesel generators in that role, Sara Smith, a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said, pointing to a Microsoft data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with behind-the-meter gas-fired generation as an example. Black Hills Energy, the local utility, can use the Microsoft generation during peak periods.
“Those behind the meter assets can serve as bridging capacity in the short run,” Janous said. “They can serve as peaking capacity for the grid in the medium term, and then long term, they can become the backup resources for the data centers.”
Further, deep-pocketed data center companies can fund energy infrastructure needs, according to Janous. “There is a lot of opportunity to fund infrastructure projects on the back of individual customers or a subset of customers that really hasn't ever existed before, not at this scale,” he said.
When considering where to build data centers, cost and market structure are no longer important factors to their developers, according to Janous. “Speed, scale and some pathway to sustainability, that's what they want to see,” he said. “They want to start plugging in [graphics processing units] as quickly as possible.”
The companies driving the data center boom are committed to their sustainability goals, but are willing to compromise in the short-term, according to Janous.
Access to labor is another key factor in deciding where to build data centers — a factor that may make it harder to build them in remote areas, Janous said.
