By Robert Haugh
A Bloomberg news story on stalled data centers in Santa Clara didn’t stay in the business pages for long. (NOTE: It’s behind a paywall)
At last night’s Santa Clara City Council meeting, the article became a major topic of discussion.
The report described two large data centers in the Mission City. Both are fully built, and both are empty. The data centers are waiting for electricity from Silicon Valley Power (SVP).
One project is a 430,000-square-foot data center by Digital Realty Trust. The company first applied for approval in 2019. The shell is up and the building is complete. But it still has no full power.
The second is a nearby 48-megawatt project by Stack Infrastructure, now owned by Blue Owl Capital. That facility is also finished and vacant.
Both projects are tied to the same problem: SVP does not yet have enough capacity to fully energize them.
Vice Mayor Kelly Cox called attention to the story during the discussion of a major SVP expenditure that was on the consent calendar.
“Have we overpromised and underdelivered?” Cox asked.
Bloomberg reported that Santa Clara has 57 active or under-construction data centers. It also reported that SVP is in the middle of a $450 million system upgrade scheduled to be completed in 2028.
Until that work is done, new and existing data centers are competing for limited power in one of the most grid-stressed markets in the country.
The article framed Santa Clara as a case study of a national problem. Demand for data centers is surging because of AI and cloud computing. The power grid is not keeping pace. Utilities across the country are warning of multi-year waits to connect large new facilities.
In Santa Clara, that’s obvious from the street. Data center complexes that look ready for tenants are dark and unused.
City and SVP staff did not have specific answers to address City Council concerns. But more detail will be provided next month when SVP provides its bi-annual report to the public.
SVP should focus on increasing efficiency via local generation of electricity and harvesting the heat. Combined Heat, Power and Cooling Districts can achieve over 90% efficiency.
Maybe a better question should be why are the residents of Santa Clara the only residents in the County to have another increase from Silicon Valley Power?? Last January our bill increased 5%, now there is another 4% being proposed beginning January 2026. We are not using this power, why is the money not being paid by the Companies that are utilizing these data centers.
There should not be another increase for the residents of Santa Clara, period.
And when SVP asks for a rate hike to pay for it. The data centers should pay, not everyone. It’s rediculous that all our rates need to increase because more infrastructure is needed for billion dollar companies and data centers. Charge them more. Simple. Problem solved.
Actually, if it were structured the right way the data centers should be subsidizing us, not the other way around.
I agree, data centers use 85% of the city power. Also there more than just two vacant days in the city waiting for power. It time the large user pay any increase that is needed.
I don’t know what residents would not agree with this. The council works for the residents and should vote accordingly — no increase for residents. Like Howard said, they should instead be subsidizing us.
Sure, we can’t deliver power, so what? Just look how green we are with all the ‘renewable’ and ‘green’ power we use.
This is a very expensive chicken that has come home to roost. Hard to believe that people actually believed they are going to save the world by buying an EV. The world doesn’t need to be saved from co2, we could use more co2. But what we really need is cheap and abundant energy. Sadly it is available but we have to ignore those that believed the global warming hype. The hype was so false they had to change the name to climate change to blame the next ice age on humans. How are we going get everyone into EV’s if we can’t even provide the power we already promised?
This is just nuts, and sadly the tip of the global warming iceberg. If we don’t change direction, and soon, it will just get worse.
The solution? Not immediate, but we need small, distributed nuclear plants. They are safe, clean and effective. This would also eliminate the long, necessarily high voltage, power lines going through our forests starting fires. But what do I know? I’m just an old man watching young fools.
Howard….I agree. Nuclear is critical to our future. Anything not mobile should be powered by nuclear….simple.