Where data centers go, and why

Here is a short lesson. Virginia's legislative research agency, JLARC, reported that Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in the world.

JLARC found that data centers chose the region for a strong fiber network, a supply of reliable, cheap energy, available land, and the state's data center tax incentive. Those are the same things any large site is screened for.

The Department of Energy calls data centers one of the most energy-intensive building types. They can use 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building.

For a data center or any large load, the interconnection queue — the line to connect to the grid — is usually the binding constraint, more often than land or zoning.