Two big stumbling blocks for Data Centers have been electricity and water.
A new project, dubbed “Project Cannoli”, near Detroit Metro Airport in Southeast Michigan is being developed in an area with very large municipal water supply, which is more than sufficient for the facility.
What is interesting is Google’s plan to for a clean energy solution for power, which includes a large buy of clean energy, battery storage, and demand flexibility in the region.
Michigan has been a leader in placing guardrails on Data Centers, insisting that clean energy goals be met, and ratepayers get protection from price impacts, or economic fallout if the industry stumbles.
A list of demands was developed for the Stargate facility in nearby Washtenaw County, near Ann Arbor, where developer Oracle is required to use a closed loop cooling system, provide financial collateral and other revenue guarantees to utilities, pay for its own grid connection, and buy 1400 MW of battery resources at its expense, to be operated by the utility DTE.
Google’s project builds on a similar framework.
DTE Energy and Google announced plans on Tuesday to develop a 1-gigawatt data center, possibly as part of the “Project Cannoli” development in Van Buren Township.
The company’s planned Michigan operations will be served by 2.7 GW of new grid resources in the form of solar power, energy storage, and demand flexibility, Will Conkling, Google’s head of data center development for the Americas, said in a blog post.
The data center plans call for it to begin taking service in December 2027, “with max load being achieved by December 2028,” according to DTE.
DTE said Tuesday the contracts with Google include provisions to ensure the tech giant pays the full cost of serving its load and additional customer protections that require the company to cover new generation, storage, transmission, and distribution investments for the data center.
The contract with Google is expected to have nearly $1.7 billion in “positive affordability benefits” for existing customers, according to DTE.
The 2.7 GW of new resources Google said will be developed represent the power demand of roughly 2 million homes. DTE delivered a peak of 10.1 GW to customers in 2022.
Google is committed to responsibly growing its infrastructure by expanding local energy supply and funding energy affordability initiatives in the communities where it operates. As part of this announcement, Google is introducing a $10 million Energy Impact Fund to scale and accelerate energy affordability initiatives that are designed to drive down monthly bills for communities in Michigan. These include home weatherization, efficiency technology innovations for households and energy workforce development projects. Google will kick off a funding application process for local organizations.
Google’s data center operations will be served by 2.7 gigawatts (GW) of new resources for the grid, including solar power, advanced storage technologies and demand flexibility. This Clean Capacity Acceleration Agreement with DTE will bring new, clean resources online, while supporting the state’s transition away from coal-fired power. As part of our standard approach to building new data centers, Google will fully cover its electricity costs and infrastructure needs, helping to ensure that its growth protects local ratepayers and actively bolsters the long-term resilience of the state’s electricity grid.
Project Cannoli Frequently asked Questions:
How Much Water will the Data Center Use and Where will the Water Come From?
A: Per the developer the estimated water usage for the data center project is somewhere between 2 to 3.6 million gallons per day. The data center will be required to buy water from the Township for cooling purposes. There is no proposal from the project to take any water directly from surface water, groundwater, or aquifers as a part of this project.
Can the Township Provide That Much Water to the Project?
A: Van Buren Township purchases drinking water from the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) to supply to our customers. The GLWA draws water from Lake Huron and the Detroit River and supplies drinking water to 80+ communities in Metro Detroit. The Township water system has several connections to GLWA distribution/transmission mains which act to stabilize water pressure and provide redundancies in our water service capability. These large diameter water transmission mains supply water to Van Buren Township as well as communities to the west and north. The data center project is proposed to be served by a 24” inch water line which directly connects to a GLWA 42” transmission main near the Tyler Road and Haggerty Road intersection. This connection will be for the cooling water, there will be a second water connection for the office building on site to provide domestic water to the site.
Both the Township Engineers and the GLWA Engineers have reviewed the water demand for this project and have determined that the GLWA system has the available capacity to handle this demand without having an effect on the Township’s or GLWA’s ability to provide water service to our water customers.
How Will This Project Affect Utility Bills and Power Reliability?
A: DTE made the following statements in a letter to the Township for the project:
“During the community open house, residents raised understandable concerns regarding reliability and affordability. We take these concerns seriously and believe it is important to clarify that state law and Michigan’s regulated utility market offers protections to DTE customers from bearing any costs associated with data centers. In fact, existing customers are positioned to benefit when these large energy users join the electrical system that serves southeast Michigan.
Michigan’s bipartisan law that is attracting data centers to the state requires that projects pay their own way, ensuring residential customers are not subject to higher costs or subsidized rates when these projects are developed. Moreover, investments in utility infrastructure are not unlike investments made into municipal infrastructure. When large, energy-intensive users become part of DTE’s customer base, costs to improve and maintain the system are spread more widely, creating an affordability benefit for all customers. Given the scale of infrastructure investments DTE is making on behalf of its customers, the timing of these projects coming to our electric service territory is fortuitous.