1500 Warburton Avenue Santa Clara, CA 95050 • 408-615-6600 ·Fax 408-249-0217• www.siliconvalleypower.com November 7
th
, 2023
Memo: All Developers
Subject: Silicon Valley Power (SVP) Capacity Constraints for New Data Center Projects The City of Santa Clara currently has 13 data centers that are entitled or under construction, seven data centers that have completed System Impact Studies, and additional data centers that have expressed interest in developing. With the currently entitled and under construction projects, SVP will need to almost double in size to provide enough power capacity. Due to near-term limitations on both the SVP city-wide electric system and the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) controlled transmission electric grid, SVP cannot accommodate new data center project capacity requests or existing data center expansion requests. This means SVP will not process any additional System Impact Studies or any connection requests for new data center projects or request to expand at existing data centers As you know, data centers require a considerable amount of energy to operate which requires significant capacity from the SVP and CAISO infrastructure. As noted above, the City of Santa Clara has multiple data center projects with entitlements and under construction. Per our current modeling, these existing projects have reserved all the upgraded capacity that is being created through the construction of the CAISO High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission line project and SVP’s internal system expansion projects. These projects are slated to come on-line in 2028/2029 timeframe. Until these projects are further along, and their construction schedules better defined, it is unknown when SVP will be able to serve additional unentitled data center projects or expansion of existing data centers. However, SVP can continue to serve any other land use proposals for these properties that are not as energy intensive, and these should follow the standard City of Santa Clara Development process.
SVP and the CAISO have been working to identify additional electric and transmission system improvements to accommodate future growth. SVP has identified approximately half a billion dollars of local projects to accommodate future growth and continues to work with the CAISO to facilitate additional transmission capacity. SVP pledges to keep communication open with our customers about further developments and schedules as discussions with our City Council and CAISO move forward. SVP continues to evaluate historical parcel usage for load requests. Any projects that require a 12kV service connection will still need to be studied for deliverability.
The Silicon Valley Power Quarterly Report presented to Council on October 10th, 2023, provides additional information, and we encourage you to watch the meeting and review the presentation for more details. In addition, SVP continues to explore creative ideas to manage this constraint and continues to be open to partner with customers on creative solutions.
Thank you,
__________________________
Manuel Pineda
Chief Electric Utility Officer