In addition to that, its electricity rate 20% below the national average made it the perfect place to develop technology and hosting infrastructure. This availability of stable power in combination with the fiber infrastructure and government support is essential to the ever-expanding data center space. It provides about 1 Gigawatt of reliable, low cost energy throughout North Virginia. Dominion Energy is the main power utility provider to the region. The final element making Northern Virginia attractive for data centers is its power. Increasing investments in building new and upgrading existing data centers that support the provision of cloud services is among the main drivers of growth. Data center operators are continuing their buildouts at a rapid pace. The huge presence of government technology contracting companies has also contributed to this pool of talented workers. Northern Virginia boasts a technically skilled workforce. Large sources of cheap power are available, and local construction companies have been tackling data center projects for nearly thirty years, making them as close to experts in the field as you’re going to find. NOVA is perfect for cloud computing because its local economy is already stable from previous development projects, making major utility price hikes unlikely in the near future. With an unemployment rate of 3.3 percent, and a sales tax exemption for data center customers that goes through 2035, it’s easy to see why the area is attracting the bigwigs of colocation. Loudon County is the number one county in America for personal income, with an average household income reaching beyond six figures to $125,900, according to Census Bureau information. The land was reasonably priced, the electricity cost was low, and it was near a skilled and educated population. The amount of electricity required just to power the growing number of centers increases exponentially each year.īy the late 1990s, this section of North Virginia was viewed as the perfect place for the expansion of the internet and fiber networks. Another way to put it is that 3% of the total electricity used in the world recently went for data centers. Almost 40% of the electricity required to keep the lights on in the United Kingdom is the amount used to provide electricity to data centers across the world. This is significant because keeping servers cool is the greatest expense related to data centers, and the cost is tremendous. In Ashburn, the cost of electricity is 20% lower than the natural average. But now? Due to the favorability of the region for data center development, acres are currently being sold like hotcakes for $1 million or more. Cost of Land in Ashburnįirst, the land was available at reasonable prices. Several purely practical factors considered together pinpointed Ashburn as the ideal place for Internet and fiber network expansion. This begs the questions: Why is Ashburn the site of such data storage dominance? Why Ashburn? No other markets across the seven continents approach the rate at which the Ashburn area is increasing in new data storage projects. London is a distant second, with only about half the capacity, at 559 megawatts (MWs) of inventory.ĭata Center Alley shows no signs of slowing down, with 557 MW of data center storage either under construction or in the planning stages. The data center market in and around Ashburn, in Northern Virginia, became, not long ago, the first in the world to surpass 1 gigawatt of overall data center capacity. Grasping the Scope of Ashburn’s Data Center Market That particular spot on the map is where an estimated 70 percent of the planet’s Internet traffic flows each and every day. The Internet became available to the public in 1991, and by the late 1990s, Ashburn and its surrounding region of Northern Virginia was identified as an ideal location for data centers and storage of massive amounts of data. A physical location is required for the networked computer servers in a data center. Loudoun County has similar renown and is called “The Center of the Internet” and “Data Center Alley.” Online data isn’t stored in a “cloud,” of course. Ashburn, a city in Virginia’s Loudoun County about 34 miles from Washington D.C., is widely known as the Data Center Capital of the World.
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