Optimal County-Level Siting of Data Centers in the United States

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive model to identify optimal locations for data centers across US counties, balancing resource use, costs, and renewable energy potential, to support sustainable infrastructure growth.

Contribution

It introduces an interdisciplinary, county-level modeling framework that integrates power, water, climate, and generation factors for data center siting decisions.

Findings

Capital costs are the primary factor in site selection.

Long-term planning and renewable collocation influence site choices.

Higher renewable potential sites are favored with more flexible planning.

Abstract

Data centers are growing rapidly, creating the pressing need for the development of critical infrastructure build out to support these resource-intensive large loads. Their immense consumption of electricity and, often, freshwater, continues to stress an already constrained and aging power grid and water resources. This paper presents a comprehensive modeling approach to determine the optimal locations to construct such facilities by quantifying their resource use and minimizing associated costs. The interdisciplinary modeling approach incorporates a number of factors including the power grid, telecommunications, climate, water use, and collocated generation potential. This work establishes the base model whose functionality is shown through several test cases focusing on carbon-free generation collocation on a county-level in the United States. The results suggest that while capital costs are the biggest driver, having a longer future outlook and allowing more variable generation collocation influences the model to choose sites with higher renewable potential.