Virginia data-center water and capacity: what the terms establish

An operator’s critical IT-load or campus-capacity specification describes a different measure from a utility service commitment. Vantage’s VA4 page identifies planned critical IT load and future delivery targets. QTS publishes critical campus specifications. These measures are not proof of delivered or energized utility capacity. [Vantage Data Centers; QTS Data Centers]

Our analysis: preserve the unit, capacity basis, phase, source date and planned-versus-delivered state. Do not combine a utility figure with an IT-load figure or add overlapping program and campus amounts simply because the values share an MW unit.

Dominion’s public process includes the customer’s load information, infrastructure planning and potentially additional infrastructure and regulatory steps. Its guidance describes site-specific plans and staged service. A nearby line or substation does not establish a property’s available capacity. [Dominion Energy]

Our analysis: maintain separate evidence for the request, proposed service arrangement, required facilities, conditions and actual energization. Treat a possible early service stage separately from the final load assumed in a developer’s full-buildout specification.

JLARC’s Virginia review discusses differences in data-center cooling systems and water demand. A statewide observation cannot establish the actual peak demand, annual use, supplier capacity or permissions of a particular campus. [Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission]

Our analysis: request the cooling design, peak and annual demand assumptions, supply source, utility commitments and relevant withdrawal or discharge records. Distinguish an operator’s design statement from measured operating use. If the source does not disclose an item, it remains unknown, not zero.

Virginia DEQ’s air-permit records concern an environmental approval trail; Loudoun’s guidance concerns local land-use controls. Neither source should be read as a universal statement that a project is built, financed, connected to utilities or operating. [Virginia Department of Environmental Quality; Loudoun County]

Our analysis: identify the issuing authority, scope, conditions and date of each approval. Keep backup-generation permissions, cooling-water questions, local land use and utility service in separate diligence tracks until the record establishes how they connect.

Our analysis: compare the same capacity basis and development stage, and show the source trail alongside the figure. When the sources differ, state that difference rather than producing an apparently precise total. A smaller disclosed number is not necessarily a smaller completed project, and a larger marketed number is not necessarily a larger current utility customer.

The Virginia tracker preserves those qualification fields and the comparison view presents each record’s disclosures separately. Use the source register for the original documents and the coverage matrix for unresolved fields; the desk’s selected records do not establish a complete statewide power or water denominator.