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In this episode, Raymond Hawkins sits down with Ed Socia, North American Insight Director for datacenterHawk, to talk about the cutting-edge world of data centers.
With a background in community development and sustainability from the University of Vermont, Ed transitioned from managing renewable research platforms to working with top data center teams, including a pivotal role at CBRE.
The conversation explores the impacts of digital transformation and how it resulted in the current power constraints in emerging markets.
Key topics:
🔍 The accelerated digital transformation: Increased demand for data center infrastructure due to the shift to remote work.
🌎 Market shifts: Driven primarily by power availability. This shift is changing how and where data centers are developed.
🔋 The energy challenge: Established data center markets are facing power constraints, prompting the industry to explore innovative power solutions like nuclear energy.
🏛️ Regulatory and Community Challenges: Widespread adoption of new power sources will require overcoming regulatory and community acceptance challenges.
🎙️ Tune in and gain exclusive perspectives on what’s next in the digital infrastructure landscape!
Read the full transcript below:
Ed Socia [00:00:00]:
It’s helpful to know what people what your competitors are doing today. But it’s I think it’d be even more important to know what they’re doing next. We’ve been saying for a while, you know, hey, Dominion Dominion is telling the story that we’re running out of power. We we’ve got some transmission lines to build, but we’ve also got to figure out the the generation side.
Raymond Hawkins [00:00:26]:
Alright. Welcome to another edition of Not Your Father’s Data Center. I am Raymond Hawkins, chief revenue officer at Compass. And today, our friends at DatacenterHawk are are joining us. And today in the person of Ed, you’re gonna tell me how to pronounce it because I don’t wanna butcher it. Tell me how to say your last name properly, Ed.
Ed Socia [00:00:44]:
Yeah. It’s Socia.
Raymond Hawkins [00:00:46]:
Socia. Alright.
Ed Socia [00:00:47]:
That’s
Raymond Hawkins [00:00:47]:
right. Just like the catcher for the Mets, I hate it, but, that’s probably the best reference I can give. Or Mets and Dodgers. Do you know playing with the Dodgers too? Yeah.
Ed Socia [00:00:56]:
I think so. I know Mets for sure. I I grew up in a Yankees household. Yeah.
Raymond Hawkins [00:01:00]:
So, yeah, you’re definitely not that’s not that’s not ringing a bell for you.
Ed Socia [00:01:03]:
That was that was the, that was that was the, comparison I always got. So we’re running out of the money.
Raymond Hawkins [00:01:07]:
Insight director in North America for data center ops. You gotta tell us what that means first, and then we’re gonna dig into who you are.
Ed Socia [00:01:14]:
Yeah, Raveed. You know, so I mean, I’m a storyteller, and a lot my friends would hear that and laugh, and they’d say you sure are. But, you know, it’s basically my role as
Raymond Hawkins [00:01:22]:
Especially about your fishing?
Ed Socia [00:01:24]:
Yeah. Exactly.
Raymond Hawkins [00:01:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. I got it.
Ed Socia [00:01:27]:
But, you know, it’s it’s kinda my role is to to have these conversations with with folks in the market and figure out what’s going on. You know, take take all these little sound bites and and put them into this story that we can tell, you know, aside from the metrics and the charts and the graphs and the statistics and all that good stuff. But more important than the what is the why. Why are people going to certain markets? Power challenges are tough, but, you know, what does that mean? And and, you know, why why is this what everybody’s speaking about now? So
Raymond Hawkins [00:01:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, before we get into the data center business, let’s learn a little bit about you. You do not sound like you’re from South Texas. So, get back up to to to where are you from, and and, you know, kinda weave a path that leads us to to Rhett and David’s door. How how did you get to data center on it?
Ed Socia [00:02:17]:
Yeah. So, I grew up in, Syracuse, New York. Go Orin. Yeah.
Raymond Hawkins [00:02:23]:
You know? Go Orin? Yeah. Boeheim and and Earl the Pearl and
Ed Socia [00:02:27]:
Yep. That’s right. See if
Raymond Hawkins [00:02:28]:
I can make any other yeah.
Ed Socia [00:02:29]:
We had McDab at Lake
Raymond Hawkins [00:02:31]:
Effect snow? Lake effect snow?
Ed Socia [00:02:33]:
A lot of lake effect snow.
Raymond Hawkins [00:02:34]:
For that.
Ed Socia [00:02:35]:
Yep. So so I grew up in Syracuse. You know, went to, parochial school there. I went to Catholic school. And, after graduation, I went up to Burlington, Vermont, attended the University of Vermont. And I have a degree in community development, with a focus on sustainability.
Raymond Hawkins [00:02:49]:
You can’t you can’t let a Catamount shout out go by. Come
Ed Socia [00:02:52]:
on. Yeah. Yeah. Go
Raymond Hawkins [00:02:53]:
Catamounts. Go Catamounts. Catamounts. That’s right.
Ed Socia [00:02:55]:
I’m I’m proud of my school. I’m, athletically, I identify as an orange man.
Raymond Hawkins [00:03:01]:
That’s good. That’s good. You’re allowed to do that these days.
Ed Socia [00:03:04]:
But yeah. So, you know, I I went to UVM with, with, with this idea in mind, decided sustainability and, you
Raymond Hawkins [00:03:11]:
know That’s before orange man became a political term. Yeah. Right? That’s right. Some people don’t know that’s the Syracuse mascot, not, And they had to drop down. Presidential candidate.
Ed Socia [00:03:22]:
They had now there’s the orange because they had, I think, lady Orangfin sounded kinda funny, which my mascot in high school were the brothers because it was a Lasallian school. So the lady brothers sounded even, sounded even funnier. So
Raymond Hawkins [00:03:33]:
Even a little clunkier?
Ed Socia [00:03:34]:
A little clunkier. Yeah. So I went up there and studied sustainability, which in the mid 2000, you know, sustainability was like a hippie term. And everybody’s saying, you know, you just wanna go around and be Johnny Appleseed and plant trees. And and I said, no. No. This is really the future. You know, we’re moving in this direction and, you know, cut to, whatever, 15 years later.
Ed Socia [00:03:53]:
Sustainability, you know, I’m I’m seeing on LinkedIn all the time, people with sustainability officers and the ESG buzz came around. So yeah. So lived in Burlington for a long time, and I graduated, and I came out here where I am now to Denver,
Raymond Hawkins [00:04:03]:
Colorado. Alright. So one set of mountains to another.
Ed Socia [00:04:06]:
Yeah. Yeah. These mountains are a little bigger out here.
Raymond Hawkins [00:04:08]:
Yeah. Bigger out there in Denver.
Ed Socia [00:04:10]:
Yeah. But, you know, I basically came out. I just loved Colorado and, Syracuse has about 55 days of sun a year and 300 days overcast and Colorado is the exact opposite. So Yeah. So that was that was, you know, that was a no brainer. And then I’m a big music fan. My girlfriend and I see a ton of, live music that we have. We’re about 15 minutes from Red Rocks.
Ed Socia [00:04:30]:
You know, it’s it’s just it’s a great place to be. And, so when I got out here, you know, I I started as I got an internship, at this company that has since been acquired. At the time, it was called Energy Acuity, and it was basically what we do at DatacenterHawk, the market intelligence, side, you know, the business. But it wasn’t Data Center specific. It was power generation and delivery specific.
Raymond Hawkins [00:04:52]:
Is that what took you to Denver, going to work for energy acuity?
Ed Socia [00:04:54]:
No. I came to Denver with I sold my Jeep. Got about $2,000 in in cash in my pocket, pack to back pack and headed out, put on some couches. This is, you know, I was, I think I was like 21 at the time.
Raymond Hawkins [00:05:06]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It went back when all that was fun.
Ed Socia [00:05:09]:
Back when all that was fun. And, and I’m sure some of my friends catch it a little longer than they wanted me to. But, I got an internship at that company and kind of climbed my way up. And by the end, of my I was there for about 8 or 9 years. And at the end of that, I was, managing the entire research, platform for the renewables piece. So, you know, that was really fun. And I I got my, feet underneath me with, you know, basically, just the American electric grid and and different regulatory bodies like FERC versus, you know, different independent system operators and and how it’s a really complex, system and the generation side and the delivery side, things like that, the policy side. So then, you know, when I decided to kinda move and it was a it was a small company, but, they were later acquired and by a massive company called Enverus.
Ed Socia [00:05:54]:
It’s a it’s a great, great company. You know, I kinda said, hey. What what’s the next step? And I had some, some close friends and some family members that had been in, telco and and data center space. They’re like, dad, this is a really interesting really interesting time. So cut to I I applied, you know, to VRE to be their director of research for North America. And when I’m talking to my, former fearless leader, mister Pat Lynch, you know, we’re talking about, you know, one of your strengths. And I said I have a proficiency in research and all this stuff, and and I have this really, you know, robust understanding of the power markets and and power policy and things like that. Candidly, I’m, you know, I’m I’m I have some stuff to learn on data centers.
Ed Socia [00:06:33]:
Pat said, well, that’s great, Ed. He said, you’re surrounded by people who know data centers. You’re what we don’t have is people who know power.
Raymond Hawkins [00:06:38]:
And help help me out. What year is this? You’re in Denver, which is where Pat is. Yep. You you you go you get connected to CBRE. What what year are you and he first talking?
Ed Socia [00:06:46]:
So I’ll tell you the exact date, And it was March Okay. It was March 13, 2020, which was the first day
Raymond Hawkins [00:06:53]:
Oh, wow. It’s recent.
Ed Socia [00:06:54]:
The first day of the pandemic. So I got an email after I quit a good job that I’ve been at for, you know, the better part of a decade.
Raymond Hawkins [00:07:01]:
Yeah. I Hey, by the world. The world’s gonna shut down today. Great job. Yeah. Good timing.
Ed Socia [00:07:05]:
Well, so I I I got a, I got a call or I I got an email first. It was, like, hey, we’re gonna the office might I was with the tower on on Monday, which is 16th March. And, I get an email. It’s like, hey. We’re gonna close the office on Monday. Just hold tight. We need to figure out this coronavirus thing. So I’m like, okay.
Raymond Hawkins [00:07:23]:
Boy, there’s, there’s the understatement of all time.
Ed Socia [00:07:25]:
I have danger. You know, and I’m working out of my Gmail. I’m working from like a little, I was in Capitol Hill till there’s riots going on outside of my window. He’s like, you’re a fast it’s a really, really, it’s kind of a, it’s a wild time. It was a crazy time.
Raymond Hawkins [00:07:39]:
But Interesting time.
Ed Socia [00:07:41]:
It was very interesting times and, you know, that week turned into a month. That month turned into, like, 6 months. That 6 months turned into over a year. And the whole time, you know, basically, I’m I’m just thinking, like, what the hell is this? Hey. It’s it’s sitting there, you know, is this the new normal? I guess the benefit of all of that is when everything else in our economy and all of the, the, you know, you talk about REITs and you talk about especially with commercial real estate and talk about different verticals or different asset classes, data centers, people were like, man, you landed in it right at the right time. Because data centers were, you know, responding. I mean, everybody felt the squeeze, but but data centers were really with the dispersed workforce, with, you know, people going to this sort of hybrid remote, setup. The statistic I always used to throw out was Zoom, in beginning of March of 2020 went from, like, 30 something like 30,000,000 calls a day.
Ed Socia [00:08:32]:
By the end of March, it was up to, like, 300,000,000. And then by the end of April, it was up to, like, over 400,000,000 Zoom calls a day. And, you know, I’m learning about this this digital infrastructure at the time, and that everything has to traverse this physical fiber, you know, to get from point a to point b. So, you know, it’s it’s while all this is going on, at least everyone’s patting me on the back going, man, you’ve really accepted it in a good way. So Yeah. You know?
Raymond Hawkins [00:08:56]:
So we’re taking we’re taking the sustainability researcher, and we’re teaching you about IP packets.
Ed Socia [00:09:00]:
Exactly.
Raymond Hawkins [00:09:01]:
And we’re saying this stuff bounces around, and amazingly, video packets are really, really big and lots and lots of work and yeah. Alright. Boy, as if our industry I mean, our industry had been growing for, you know, almost 2 decades at at that point, and it it didn’t need gasoline thrown on the fire, but boy and and that’s one of the things I know the pandemic was a horrible experience for mankind and a horrible experience for our planet. But, man, it it did have an unbelievable I heard somebody fairly early. It was in that that first summer. So so June or July of 20 say that we’ve had 3 years of digital transformation in the last 3 months. And I think it forced organizations to go, hey. How do I do this differently? And I know you you use the the the metric for Zoom.
Raymond Hawkins [00:09:52]:
Certainly, it changed the way, you know, everybody communicated and had meetings and where they sat. But but that forced a lot of change on the back end. Right? You alluded to networks, of course, then there’s gotta be data centers and servers and all of that. So so our industry got a huge boost from the need to be able to do things remotely. And and then I’ve I’ve I’ve heard something lately about I’m not sure I’m gonna spell it right. I think it’s a I, something like that. I’m not I’m not a 100 percent sure, but Sure. It’s I hear it’s doing something too to our industry and, you know, GPUs, I think.
Raymond Hawkins [00:10:27]:
I’m not I’m not sure. But, seems to also be providing another, accelerant, to what was already a pretty well performing market. So so alright. So you go work with Pat Lynch, who we think the
world of at CBRE in early 2000. You’re basically a a researcher with a sustainability environmental background, and you get dropped in the middle of the best data center team Yeah. In the brokerage world. Right? I mean, I think that’s fair right there.
Ed Socia [00:10:55]:
I would say it’s fair.
Raymond Hawkins [00:10:56]:
Biggest and Yeah. And you go, okay. On top of that, now everything’s gonna go gangbusters because we just lit a powder keg because everybody’s gotta do this thing from home. Alright. We’re caught up. Keep going. How do what goes on from 2,000
Ed Socia [00:11:11]:
Yeah. So
Raymond Hawkins [00:11:12]:
and 20? Excuse me. 10. Yeah.
Ed Socia [00:11:13]:
Yeah. I, so yeah. Kept kept going on CBRE, and I I still to this day, I I I love CBRE. I love the green machine. I grew a lot there and, you know, I I have, nothing but respect for that company. I I dip my toes to the world of brokerage for a little while, and and I realized that I I really do like the research piece had, you know, versus your sales piece. So I kind of, you know, said, hey, how do I downsize a little bit in terms of company? Because I am a very social person. I like to know everybody that I work with and there’s a 140, a 150,000 people in CDRE.
Ed Socia [00:11:44]:
I know a lot of people. I don’t know that many people. It’s a tall ass. It’s just all I ask you. I think if anybody could do me, but, but anyway, so, you know, then basically took a sabbatical for a couple months and got outside and was hiking in the beautiful, front range of Colorado. And basically, you know, reached out to to Mike Netzer, who’s who you’ve spoken with before at at DatacenterHawk. Yeah. Yeah.
Ed Socia [00:12:05]:
And Mike kinda laughed and he was like, Ed, I’m gonna send you an email or I’m gonna have, you know, David send you an email. And it turned out I I was listening to that, hey, you know, I took
some downtime. I’ve thrown my hat back in the ring. Just let you know. Let me know if anything comes up. And unbeknownst to me, they had been looking for a director for North America. So, you know, I I talked to him about it. We we chatted.
Ed Socia [00:12:24]:
It seemed like a great fit. That was back in, jeez, August of last year, I think. So I’m I’m still a little under a year of Dennis
Raymond Hawkins [00:12:29]:
and her hawk. Alright.
Ed Socia [00:12:30]:
It’s been great, you know, flying around, and David and I, David and I really hit it off. He’s, just like Pat Rensch. I mean, he’s second to none when when it comes to being a leader.
Raymond Hawkins [00:12:39]:
Good human being.
Ed Socia [00:12:40]:
These guys in the leadership positions, they lead by example. And both Pat and Dave did that. You know, there’s no there’s no call they wouldn’t get on. There’s no you know, they they wouldn’t send you into battle, if they themselves weren’t going in with you. And I don’t know. I find that to be a very admirable quality from a leadership standpoint.
Raymond Hawkins [00:12:56]:
Yeah. Hear hear. Well, I will just say at at Compass, we are friends with the of the program. We’re big Dave Liggett fans. We we we love him and have known him a long, long time and and the Liggett family, which we’ll talk about another time, and, and and thank the world of him as well. So so okay. So you meet Netzer, and he says, we’re looking for somebody in North America. And then you meet Liggett, and it sounds like it’s a thing, and you’ve been there a year.
Raymond Hawkins [00:13:21]:
And give us I know you gave us a little bit at the top, but insight director, what’s the real mission?
Ed Socia [00:13:27]:
The real mission is just is just telling the story of of what’s going on and and where the ball is moving. And it’s helpful to know what people what your competitors are doing today, but it’s I think it’d be more important to know what they’re doing next. So when you can find these trends and you can kind of identify, hey, why, you know, why is everybody moving south down the I 95 corridor when Loudoun County is, you know, a massively core Ashford’s massively developed. Again, flicking on in terms of fiber connectivity. And then everything kinda sprawled over to Prince William County and Manassas and, you know, you can look at land pricing out there. We’ve been saying for a while, you know, hey, Dominion Dominion is telling the story that we’re running out of car. We’ve got some transmission lines to build, but we’ve also got to figure out, you know, the the generation side. So we’re thinking, okay.
Ed Socia [00:14:17]:
Well, then there’s no VAC territory. There’s all this other region. So when you start to look at this stuff and then you start to track the, you know, the providers that are buying the the parcels or, you know, they’re doing their site selection, and you start to say, okay. Botolphania, Bakir, Culpeper, and you see this trend that we’ve kind of been talking about for a while. You know, you guys have that alternatively coming up from Austin, Lancaster and Red Oak, and and you’re you know, what Compass is doing is, is a great example of that. So, yeah, just taking those bits taking those bits and pieces and figuring out, hey. What does this mean? What’s the story? And then I get on camera with gentlemen such as yourself and talk about it.
Raymond Hawkins [00:14:59]:
And if you to put your chips on Lancaster, Texas in 2020 as being a data center market, that’d have been some real insight.
Ed Socia [00:15:07]:
Hey, David David might have done it.
Raymond Hawkins [00:15:09]:
He might he might have called out Lancaster in in fairness. Yeah. South of town in in Dallas certainly became a thing. You know, if you go back 5 years, no one was talking about it. But 3 years ago, it really became a thing. And and boy now, it’s just gangbusters. So I know we can talk about South Dallas because it’s it’s it’s, you know, headquarters for both of us. Let’s talk a little bit about what what you see in those markets that are going gangbusters.
Raymond Hawkins [00:15:32]:
You mentioned going down Prince William County down down I 95. What, with with your energy background, what do you think is, leading us to where the industry is going? The you know, I I don’t know I joked about AI, but but certainly it’s changed the the the size of what we talk about
with people. It’s changed the pace of what we talk about, and I also think it’s changed in location. So take any one of those 3 you wanna take.
Ed Socia [00:15:58]:
I think the important thing to note is when we used to and and it was almost before I even got into the space that people would talk about markets as tiers, a tier one market, a tier 2 market. I was sort of introduced to them in through the lens of primaries, secondaries, tertiaries. What we’ve seen recently is sort of a, I don’t know if I’d call it a flight, but am I brochure from these from these more established markets to essentially non markets? Think rural Ohio, you know, south of San Dusty, things like that. And it’s all driven by that availability to acquire power sooner than later and then scale that power, you know, with your growing requirement. You know, a lot of these providers are sort of kind of hedging their bets and they’re they’re deploying multiple, you know, multiple markets at the same time. But, you know, if you need to be in a market, if you have a latency sensitive requirement or or your your end user, I should say, has a latency sensitive, requirement. You know, you need to be in that core market. But if you have, you know and if you wanna go back to the to our alphabet, our alphabet soup, if you wanna go from, like, the the AI and even the pre AI stuff, the machine learning stuff, it’s not latency agnostic.
Ed Socia [00:17:05]:
Some of it is. And then some of it is is, latency is, latency sensitive, I guess, I would say. So I think we’re starting to see folks say, hey. While we’re waiting for these will serve letters, while we’re waiting for these load letters from utilities who, you know, are giving us a 2, 3, 4 year out, you know, estimated delivery date, where can we go now? How can we build for respectively or or building for a client? How can we do that today in markets that we have power today? And do they have applications or do they have requirements that, you know, would would work in those more, I guess, remote locations? So I I think, you know, we’re again, we’re seeing, you know, we’re still seeing folks building in Loudoun County. We’re still seeing folks building in Prince William County and all down that I 95 Corridor. We’re still seeing folks build in Hillsborough, but all these markets are power constrained. And so while they’re building these markets, they’re just trying to say, hey, where’s the power today?
Raymond Hawkins [00:18:01]:
Yeah. And the where’s the power today to your point, you already talked a little bit about in Loudoun County, the issues there, demit with Dominion. It ain’t in those markets anymore, at least not at the scale people need it. Right? And and because of that, you know, right, we don’t wanna call them tier ones and twos anymore because, you know, looking in Wyoming or Reno or Iowa or Alabama for 100 of megawatts, that’s no longer size wise a tier 2 thing, but you’re going there because you can get power. Right? And you see people in our industry doing that. It’s just, it’s it’s surprising the wear, getting, you know, originally driven by network. And now more than anything, it feels like it’s being driven by power.
Ed Socia [00:18:43]:
Yeah. And I would say, you know, I think people are a bit more or a bit less, rather, beholden to the energy or the fuel mixes of regions now. We used to see people go to areas because, hey, this place has, you know, a plethora of wind or, you know, maybe it’s even larger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a big hydro cool back up in Montreal. Large hydro.
Raymond Hawkins [00:19:03]:
Yeah.
Ed Socia [00:19:04]:
But now, you know, if you’re talking about a gigawatt, 2 gigawatt deployment, you’re basically saying, hey, who’s got 2 gigawatts to to sell us? And you’re kind of saying, we might have to put this ESG thing. We might have to put these renewable portfolio standards. We might have to stretch that that target date out a little parlor than we had initially intended because of this AI thing. You’re not gonna find multi gigawatt PPAs with straight wind energy in middle America unless
Raymond Hawkins [00:19:32]:
Certainly. Not a thing.
Ed Socia [00:19:33]:
It’s not a thing. Yeah. Unless you’re Bill, you’re a wind farms which, you know, I know AWS and and companies like that have have certainly done. Or they’re saying, let’s go behind the meter and, you know, look at the Susquehanna deal at the Nuke the Nuke facility. But that’s obviously kind of, you know, sort of, I guess, I call
Raymond Hawkins [00:19:48]:
it test tape. It’s a unique situation, but but I do think it speaks to where the future is going. Right? To be able to do the amount of energy we’re gonna need at at at scale and and neutral in the in the carbon world, I I I personally think that’s the direction we’re headed is that you’re gonna see more deals get done. You know, we’re gonna have to fix the the regulatory side of it because we, you know, we can’t wait 10 years to get a plant online.
Ed Socia [00:20:11]:
And I think that’s what it is. I think that’s what it is about a decade out. I would say that the SM or SMB, whatever you wanna call them, the the nuclear story. But, you know, I say this all the time. The United States military and the United States government has 100 of 1000 of these things
cruising around the oceans on on submarines with no detriment to the to the service They’re doing
Raymond Hawkins [00:20:29]:
it all. They’ve been doing it a
Ed Socia [00:20:32]:
long time. So so I think it’s I think it’s certainly where the market is going. I do think we’re probably 8 to 12 years out from that being, like, commonly, a commonly adopted sort of power generation stores.
Raymond Hawkins [00:20:44]:
Alright then. So I gotta test I gotta challenge you on that one. Why do you think it’s that far? Because, right, we’ve seen Microsoft announce a a project with it. We’ve seen the AWS Susquehanna deal. So so clearly, the guys the biggest guys who move our market are are already making public announcements about it. I’d love to hear your take as an energy guy, why you still think it’s that far.
Ed Socia [00:21:04]:
Aside from power availability, one of the biggest threats to data center development is the NIMBYs. Right? And so a lot of these folks who they hear nuclear and they think Fukushima, They think Chernobyl. They think, you know, they just absolutely assume the worst. So they’re gonna push back on nuclear as a generating source. If you go to Europe, you know, they’re they’re huge on nukes. I just think that I think it will be adopted, and there could be the South Quahana thing. You know, I mean, that facility was there. Microsoft has been talking about this for a while.
Ed Socia [00:21:37]:
When it comes to nukes as the preferred power source for, you know, future data centers, I just think the proliferation of that technology, it’s gonna require regulatory bodies, chime in on that. It’s gonna require a ton of capital, to develop these things. And then you’re gonna have to like, I say, you’re gonna have to get the communities on board. So maybe it’s gonna be shorter than that. I would imagine, and and from a lot of my conversations, a decade is the sweet spot that I’ve been hearing. That doesn’t mean it’s a little pop up before that, but I think in terms of being, like, pretty widely adopted or widely adopted.
Raymond Hawkins [00:22:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, Ed, when you qualify with the the the go to standard of of power for a data center, yeah, that that’s that’s probably right. Before it it’s the main street way we do things, it’s probably a decade. I think we will see projects before that. To your point, Susquehanna was already there. I think we’re going to see, this is one guy who has nowhere near the energy education you do. I think we’re going to see strain on the generation side.
Raymond Hawkins [00:22:38]:
I mean, we already see strain on the distribution side, but I think we’re gonna see and transmission side, excuse me, more than anything. I think we’re gonna see strain on the generation side across the energy portfolio, not just for data centers. We take big bites at one time, so we get noticed. And and I think the data center and tech companies are gonna go, hey. There’s a great way to fix this if you give us regulatory approval to do this, you know, 2 gigawatt generation thing with a nuclear reactor. Hey. We can give you all we don’t need to take anything off the grid. I don’t know how it’s gonna play out, but I can see that.
Raymond Hawkins [00:23:11]:
Right? When I think about who has enough money to lobby the regulators and the legislators to say, hey. I know it’s 15 years from day 1 to to, you know, commission a nuclear plant, but, hey, I could take 2 gigawatts off the grid if you give me a 5 year plan. That’s kinda how I think it gets done is is a way to relieve, pressure from the grid.
Ed Socia [00:23:30]:
You know, and and I totally agree. I think right now, today, it’s it’s both a generation and a transmission distribution issue, but it’s more the delays are more heavily on the transmission distribution. I mean, look at, again, the Dominion territory and that transmission line they’re building out. But when you talk about you know, when you look at the the future growth of data centers that we’re talking about, you know, 14 gigawatts in a year or something or or more than they whatever it is now. I mean, that’s that’s Yeah. Egregious has a pejorative connotation to it, but that’s an egregious amount of power. And, you know, like, I think the Yeah. Something like a 2.4, 2.5 gig offshore wind farm.
Ed Socia [00:24:06]:
And I was asked by a by a data center provider, is this gonna solve our problems? And I was like, no. There’s it’s not even 3 gigs. What the what’s in the pipeline just for Northern Virginia? So they’re gonna have to they’re gonna have to figure that out. I think I think that they will. I guess, Dominion has been thoughtful and they’ve done it well with, you know, coupling this up with the Loudoun County Economic Development Board, Buddy Riser in the late nineties, mid 2000. They really understood what it takes to
Raymond Hawkins [00:24:34]:
The great buddy riser. I have to add that. Because because he’ll listen. He’ll call me on it if I don’t say it. So
Ed Socia [00:24:39]:
But, you know, they they basically figured out. They said, hey. We have to be transparent with our development and and what we’re able to do and and, you know, lead times and what it what it takes to to get that car delivered. Now that these emerging markets or non market are starting to see these massive swath of data center demand, you know, like, I don’t wanna call utilities out, but but some of the utilities in in middle America are now saying, wait a second. We, they bit off more than they could chew. And so now they’re backtracking a little bit saying, wait a second. We we gotta figure this out before we just say, you know, instead of seeing just dollar signs, we say, hey, wait a minute. You know, one of the issues we’re seeing is if a hyperscaler puts out an RFP and then 4 third party data center guys go to a utility with that same RFP for ease of conversation, it’s on a 100 megawatts.
Raymond Hawkins [00:25:28]:
It’s it’s it’s not a 4 loads. That’s right.
Ed Socia [00:25:29]:
It’s shown as 4 or 5, 100 megawatts instead of a 100 megawatts. So so understanding what that Yeah. Requirement will be in the future has has been obfuscated. And, I think there’s I think there’s work to you on that side, but you’re I I totally agree. I mean, the generation thing is gonna be more and more, a quarter.
Raymond Hawkins [00:25:47]:
Alright, Ed. Energy expertise, insight director. We love David Liggett. Rhett and Mike are good guys too, but we’re kinda big Dave Liggett fans. You made a good call going there. Hard to leave Pat Lynch because he’s a great guy too.
Ed Socia [00:26:00]:
Gets it all through it all the time.
Raymond Hawkins [00:26:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. I love love that you’re still in the space with with with Pat. And, when I get to Denver, I’m looking you up. We’ll go, we’ll go hike up something.
Ed Socia [00:26:09]:
We’ll bring a beer for the top, and, we’ll talk about data centers after we’ve, consumed said beer.
Raymond Hawkins [00:26:15]:
Sounds good. Assuming I can make it to the top. Ed, thank you so much. We’ve enjoyed it, and, we will look forward to talking to you and other friends at DatacenterHawk again in the future. Thanks, man.
Ed Socia [00:26:26]:
Been great.