Data center boom sparks massive power line fights hundreds of miles away

In Cat Kemmerling’s dream, she and her husband Rob are sitting in their pickup truck on a cliff on their West Virginia farm, overlooking the Shenandoah River. The truck is falling backwards over the edge, into the abyss below.

An Army engineer who helped dismantle IEDs in Iraq and lives with PTSD, Kemmerling says her old nightmares returned this summer after an organization she had never heard of, calling itself Valley Link, mailed an anodyne flyer announcing plans for a high-voltage transmission line through the heart of the 70-acre farm she and Rob bought in 2018 as a retirement sanctuary.

The proposed development is one of several major power line projects in the works to address a steep power shortage in Northern Virginia, home to the world’s largest concentrations of data centers.

A 765-kilovolt line with a right-of-way the width of a sixteen-lane highway, the Valley Link project would string together 260 miles of 160-foot towers, stretching across three states— from West Virginia to Virginia and into Maryland. Another Valley Link project would cover 116 miles from rural central Virginia into Northern Virginia. Together, the new lines could extend across dozens of counties home to more than 1.5 million people, and yet advocates, legal experts and even their own government representatives say residents are virtually powerless to stop it.

“Overnight, my property has become worthless,” Kemmerling said. She felt helpless, like whatever sense of safety and peace they had found here is now in jeopardy. And she felt angry — because the power these massive lines will carry won’t stay in her community. It will go primarily to Loudoun County, Virginia, to fuel data centers.

“We are becoming the extension cord for Loudoun County,” Kemmerling said. “We do not benefit at all from this.”

Courtesy Betty Hogendorp

Amidst the AI boom across the US, Loudoun County, home to some 230 data centers spanning more than 56 million square feet, has become something of a cautionary tale. Nearly two decades after officials there welcomed data centers for their ample tax revenue, the country’s now-soaring electricity needs are driving proposals for enormous transmission lines through communities hundreds of miles away — places that opponents say get no tangible benefit from data centers but are losing land to power them.

Bipartisan opposition to data centers has emerged as a key midterm issue, with more than 8 in 10 Americans expressing far more concern than excitement about the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, according to recent CNN polling .

But while the national fight has centered on the development of data centers themselves, Loudoun’s experience exposes a less examined race to build the infrastructure needed to power them — including the thousands of miles of high-voltage lines all over the country. Those lines are often built under threat of eminent domain, which allows the state government to seize private property for a project that is seen as being in the public interest.

Opponents of the status quo say that has effectively cast privately-owned data centers as critical infrastructure, with the government’s compulsory power marshaled on their behalf — before the American public has agreed they want them.

“Eminent domain is being exercised on behalf of not public industry, but private industry,” said Democratic Virginia Sen. Russet Perry. “That is not something that has historically been done.”

A recent economic study from Brookings estimated that the data center build out will “double the electricity consumption of the entire US residential sector” by 2032 — power demand that “requires dedicated substations, high-voltage connections, and significant grid-interconnection investment.”

Whether the AI boom can expand at its current breakneck pace may hinge on fights like the one unfolding over Valley Link. The projects pose a consequential question: Can communities with no data centers of their own block the transmission lines needed to power facilities hundreds of miles away?

If they can — a long shot — rural communities may hold one of the few checks on an industry whose electricity demands have otherwise outpaced the laws and institutions governing the grid. If they can’t, private property owners in communities across the country could be condemned to sustain a buildout approved elsewhere.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

As Kemmerling points out, although she will be compensated for the raw acreage that the power conglomerate places under easement, it won’t account for the total loss in her property value once it’s been bisected by a massive, humming power line.

The outrage has even found expression in a bluegrass protest song, “Shame on You Valley Link,” recorded anonymously by a Virginian bluegrass musician.

“While the board rooms in Richmond count the kilowatts, we’re left the scars and our broken hearts,” he sings. “For the tech men’s cloud and their hungry machines are stealing the only home we ever had.”

The song was released on Spotify and can be streamed, thanks to data centers.

Across Virginia and West Virginia, an ad hoc assortment of grassroots organizations have emerged to oppose the power lines, marshalling public comment to the regional transmission organizations overseeing the projects and the state regulatory boards in each state responsible for approving or denying them. Town councils and county commissions have adopted resolutions formally opposing the development; some have set aside budgets of hundreds of thousands of dollars and hired outside counsel explicitly to fight it.

Even in Loudoun County, there is massive local resistance. In the rural west of the county, where monopole distribution lines flank dirt roads, leaning this way and that like crooked teeth, bright-red “NO NEW LINES IN LOUDOUN” signs have sprung up in front of small farms and homes that normally sport opposing political signage.

Mike Kropf/Richmond Times-Dispatch/Getty Images

A late-August listening session for the Valley Link project in western Loudoun was standing room only. Babies bounced on hips and FARM USE license plate tags dotted the gravel parking lot, packed bumper-to-bumper. Of dozens of sometimes-tearful public comments made, not a single person spoke in support of the project. Many made the explicit link between the transmission lines and data centers.

“It is an injustice to industrialize our rural landscape to subsidize commercial data center growth elsewhere,” one speaker said.

Community backlash has in the past pushed proposed power lines to move or killed them outright. One county on the northwest edge of Virginia, Clarke County, hired former state attorney general and counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence, Richard Cullen, and was able to score a localized win : Updated project maps from Valley Link now touch only a small tip of the county.

A spokesperson for Valley Link told CNN that the group has gone “parcel by parcel” and “spent months in the communities along these routes, walking properties and talking to thousands of residents to avoid sensitive areas that aren’t publicly mapped, places like family cemeteries, local historic sites and active farming operations.”

But, the spokesperson said, “No line of this size is built without impacts on people or communities.”

And there are few official ways for local communities to veto their development — in part because under Virginia state law, the power provider must provide power to all customers. The power has to come from somewhere.

Technically, the two lines have yet to be approved by state regulatory authorities. The regional transmission organization, PJM, one of seven nonprofits across the country that manage the flow of electricity across their regions, selected the proposed routes by Valley Link and a second major 500-kilovolt transmission line planned for the region, known as the MARL project, from a series of bids. Each state must now approve the routes.

But the Virginia authority, the State Corporation Commission, is historically deferential to power operators’ assessments of what’s needed for transmission, according to analysts and lobbyists who spoke to CNN, because one of its primary mandates is to ensure grid reliability.

There have already been alarming signals about its vulnerability: During a heat wave in July, a piece of equipment on one of the high-voltage lines serving Northern Virginia’s so-called Data Center Alley failed. Several data centers switched to backup power, disconnecting 3,000 megawatts of power from the grid — a sudden drop in demand so significant that it caused electricity to flicker from Chicago to Miami.

Riley Robinson/The Christian Science Monitor/AP

It is possible that state legislatures could intervene to force the state regulators to put more constraints on the developers.

The Virginia state house could pass a statute instructing the SCC to consider alternative routes or underground options — an expensive and logistically challenging possibility that some residents have pushed for but which Valley Link argues isn’t feasible in this case.

In West Virginia, at least one state delegate candidate, Democrat Jenny Thacker, is actively campaigning on a bid to change the structure of the state regulatory board to make it more responsive to voters.

It’s also possible that the regulator, the Public Service Commission, could reject either project. A government engineer in West Virginia has already recommended that the commission deny the MARL application because it provided “no” benefits to West Virginians. But whether that would kill the project is unclear, said Michael Barber, an infrastructure policy analyst with the Piedmont Environmental Council of Virginia, which opposes the lines. PJM could challenge the decision in court, and case law is too new in this area to make any predictions about the outcome.

And that would still not solve the problem of grid reliability if, in the next state over, a huge mass of data centers continues to draw power.

“Ultimately, the job of the commission is to ensure reliability,” said Dan Holmes, a longtime Virginia lobbyist on behalf of environmental and clean energy advocates. “When push comes to shove, I think we’re going to see approvals.”

The power shortfall in Loudoun is already driving some data centers to other markets, said Aaron Tinjum at the Data Center Coalition.

“Constraints in Loudoun County have contributed to a shift in data center development to other parts of Virginia and to fast-growing markets like Georgia,” Tinjum said.

In Ohio, PJM has already solicited bids and accepted a proposal for four new 765-kilovolt transmission lines to fuel the demand there.

Loudoun began courting data centers nearly two decades ago because it had abundant fiberoptic infrastructure and the facilities promised enormous tax revenue without adding schoolchildren or commuter traffic. Today, data centers now supply almost 40% of the county’s tax revenue, helping fund schools and community centers while keeping property tax growth low compared to surrounding areas.

What officials failed to anticipate was the scale and speed of the growth in power demand. According to Mike Turner, the vice chairman of the Loudoun County Board since 2025, a perfect storm of unpredictable shifts took place in 2022: the social migration to digital spaces like Zoom during the pandemic proved enduring, the dominant state power provider dramatically underestimated electricity demand in its projections, and ChatGPT hit the streets.

Loudoun’s energy use grew 233 percent from 2021 to 2025, to more than 5 gigawatts. According to a recent study by Turner, the county could “easily require as much as 20-30 [gigawatts] of power due to AI demands” by 2030.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/File

“Nobody could have anticipated that. It was a historic tectonic shift,” Turner told CNN.

Some data centers that have already been approved and built in the area are now facing wait times of a year or more to be hooked up to the grid because there isn’t enough power, according to Tinjum.

Even the power carried by Valley Link and MARL may not be enough.

Analysts say there is no analogous parallel for the power needs of a single private industry forcing the kind of land seizures under threat of eminent domain that northern Virginia’s data centers are now auguring.

“The complex regulatory patchwork that stitches the grid together wasn’t designed for a situation like this, where a locality can permit something that suddenly, 18 months later, you have the amount of demand in one spot on the grid that could have been an entire city that organically emerged over 100 years,” said Barber.

The clash has opened an intense debate over who should control data center siting — and who should bear the costs. The governor of New York has issued an outright moratorium on data centers, as some in Virginia, like Perry, are now calling for.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has resisted calls for a state-wide moratorium. Loudoun is considering revoking some grandfathered approvals, while some county leaders want authority to reject projects that exceed available power capacity. West Virginia has moved in the opposite direction, stripping local governments of authority.

Federal regulators, meanwhile, have ordered national reliability officials to develop criteria for connecting large computational loads to the bulk power system by the end of 2026, but those rules have not yet been set.

Industry advocates say data centers are how the modern internet functions. Although a growing number are training AI models — which consume s exponentially more power than other functions — many existing facilities provide cloud storage for critical functions like healthcare data and online banking, not to mention video and music streaming. President Donald Trump has said they will augur economic growth “bigger than the Industrial Revolution.”

No matter what ambivalence Americans may express in survey data, consumer demand for the services they provide isn’t slowing. About half of US adults now report using AI chatbots, according to recent Pew data. The Data Center Coalition, the main trade association for data centers, often cites research findings that the average American household has 21 connected devices; Pew research finds that a third of Americans have at least one smart device that runs using AI in their home.

And it has become increasingly common to see AI-generated images on social media opposing data centers and new transmission line projects.

For people like Kimmerling, it’s a familiar tale for rural America: an extractive industry carries valuable resources out of the hills and into wealthier communities closer to the coast, leaving little but scars behind.

“Here we are, fighting for our own rights on our own property,” Kemmerling said as her service dog laid his chin on her thigh. “We fought for you. Who’s fighting for us?”

Nearby, pigs grazed, chickens scratched at the earth and the Shenandoah River whispered below — the sanctuary she and her husband fear a transmission line will permanently divide.

在凯特·凯默林的梦中，她和丈夫罗布坐在西弗吉尼亚州农场悬崖边的皮卡车里，俯瞰着谢南多厄河。卡车正向后坠落，掉进下面的深渊。

曾参与伊拉克简易爆炸装置拆除工作的陆军工程师凯默林患有创伤后应激障碍。她说，今年夏天，一个她从未听说过的组织——自称“山谷连接”——寄来了一份看似无害的传单，宣布计划在她和罗布于 2018 年购买的 70 英亩农场中心地带修建一条高压输电线路，这让她的旧噩梦再次袭来。该农场被他们买下，作为退休后的避难所。

拟建项目是正在筹划的几个大型输电线路项目之一，旨在解决弗吉尼亚州北部严重的电力短缺问题，该地区是全球数据中心最集中的地区。

“山谷连接线”项目计划建设一条765千伏的输电线路，其路权宽度相当于一条十六车道高速公路。该项目将架设260英里长的160英尺高的输电塔，横跨三个州——从西弗吉尼亚州延伸至弗吉尼亚州，再到马里兰州。另一条“山谷连接线”项目则计划从弗吉尼亚州中部乡村地区延伸至弗吉尼亚州北部，全长116英里。这两条新建线路加起来可能覆盖数十个县，惠及超过150万人口。然而，倡导者、法律专家甚至当地政府代表都表示，居民们几乎无力阻止该项目。

“一夜之间，我的房产变得一文不值，”凯默林说道。她感到无助，仿佛他们在这里找到的那​​点安全感和宁静感如今也岌岌可危。她感到愤怒——因为这些巨型输电线路输送的电力不会留在她的社区。这些电力将主要输送到弗吉尼亚州的劳登县，用于为数据中心供电。

“我们正在成为劳登县的延长线，”凯默林说。“我们从中得不到任何好处。”

感谢贝蒂·霍根多普提供图片

在美国人工智能蓬勃发展的背景下，拥有约230个数据中心、总面积超过5600万平方英尺的劳登县，却成为了一个警示案例。近二十年前，当地官员曾因数据中心带来的丰厚税收而对其表示欢迎。如今，美国电力需求的飙升却促使政府提出修建巨型输电线路的方案，这些线路将穿过数百英里之外的社区——反对者认为，这些社区并未从数据中心获得任何实际利益，却因输电线路而损失土地。

两党对数据中心的反对已成为中期选举的关键议题，根据 CNN 最近的民意调查，超过 80% 的美国人对人工智能的快速发展表示担忧多于兴奋。

尽管全国的争论焦点集中在数据中心本身的建设上，但劳登县的经验却揭示了另一场鲜为人知的竞赛：为数据中心供电所需的基础设施建设——包括遍布全国的数千英里高压输电线路。这些线路的建设往往是在征用权的威胁下进行的，征用权允许州政府为了公共利益的项目而征用私人财产。

反对现状的人士表示，这实际上将私营数据中心视为关键基础设施，政府动用强制权力代表他们行事——而美国公众尚未同意他们想要这些数据中心。

弗吉尼亚州民主党参议员拉塞特·佩里表示：“现在行使征用权的不是公共部门，而是私营企业。这在历史上是从未发生过的。”

布鲁金斯学会最近的一项经济研究估计，到 2032 年，数据中心建设将“使整个美国居民部门的电力消耗量翻一番”——这种电力需求“需要专用变电站、高压连接和大量的电网互联投资”。

人工智能热潮能否以目前惊人的速度发展，可能取决于像Valley Link项目引发的这类争论。这些项目提出了一个意义重大的问题：那些自身没有数据中心的社区能否阻止为数百英里外的设施供电所需的输电线路？

如果他们能够做到——尽管希望渺茫——农村社区或许能对电力行业起到为数不多的制约作用，因为电力需求的增长速度已经远远超过了电网管理的法律和制度。如果他们做不到这一点，那么全国各地社区的私人业主可能就不得不承担在其他地方获批的电力建设项目带来的损失。

安娜·莫尼梅克/盖蒂图片社

正如凯默林所指出的那样，虽然电力集团会就其划拨的土地面积给予补偿，但这并不能弥补她的房产价值被一条巨大的、嗡嗡作响的输电线路一分为二后所造成的全部损失。

这种愤怒甚至在一首蓝草抗议歌曲《Valley Link，你真丢人》中得到了表达，这首歌由一位弗吉尼亚州的蓝草音乐家匿名录制。

“当里士满的董事们在计算千瓦数时，我们却留下了伤痕和破碎的心，”他唱道。“因为科技人士的云计算和他们贪婪的机器正在窃取我们唯一的家园。”

这首歌已在 Spotify 上发布，并且可以通过数据中心进行流媒体播放。

在弗吉尼亚州和西弗吉尼亚州，涌现出许多临时组建的基层组织，反对输电线路项目。这些组织积极收集公众意见，向负责监管项目的区域输电机构以及各州负责审批项目的州监管委员会表达诉求。一些镇议会和县委员会也通过了决议，正式反对该项目；部分镇议会和县委员会甚至拨出数十万美元预算，聘请外部律师专门应对该项目。

即使在劳登县，也存在着巨大的当地阻力。在该县西部农村地区，单极输电线路沿着土路倾斜，如同歪斜的牙齿，鲜红的“劳登县禁止新建输电线路”的标语牌出现在一些小型农场和民居前，而这些农场和民居通常都挂着反对的政治标语。

Mike Kropf/Richmond Times-Dispatch/Getty Images

八月下旬，劳登县西部举行的Valley Link项目公众意见征询会座无虚席。婴儿在人们的胯部上下颠簸，碎石停车场上到处都是“农用”车牌，车辆首尾相连，拥挤不堪。数十位公众发表了意见，其中一些人甚至哽咽落泪，但没有一个人表示支持该项目。许多人明确指出输电线路与数据中心之间存在关联。

一位发言者表示：“为了补贴其他地方的商业数据中心发展而将我们的农村地区工业化，这是不公平的。”

过去，社区的强烈反对曾迫使拟建输电线路项目迁移或直接终止。弗吉尼亚州西北边缘的克拉克县聘请了前州检察长、前副总统迈克·彭斯的法律顾问理查德·库伦，并取得了一项局部胜利：Valley Link公司更新后的项目地图现在只覆盖了该县的一小部分区域。

Valley Link 的一位发言人告诉 CNN，该组织“逐块地”进行勘测，“花了几个月的时间走访这些路线沿线的社区，走访居民的房产，并与数千名居民交谈，以避开未公开地图上的敏感区域，例如家族墓地、当地历史遗址和正在运营的农场”。

但发言人表示，“任何如此规模的输油管道的建设都会对民众或社区造成影响。”

而且，地方社区几乎没有官方途径可以否决电力开发项目——部分原因是根据弗吉尼亚州法律，电力供应商必须向所有用户供电。电力总得有个来源。

严格来说，这两条线路尚未获得州监管机构的批准。区域输电组织PJM是全美七个负责管理区域内电力传输的非营利机构之一，它从一系列投标中选定了Valley Link公司提出的线路方案，以及计划在该地区建设的第二条500千伏大型输电线路，即MARL项目。现在，各州都必须对这些线路方案进行审批。

但据与 CNN 交谈过的分析人士和游说人士称，弗吉尼亚州电力公司委员会历来尊重电力运营商对输电需求的评估，因为其主要职责之一是确保电网可靠性。

此前已有迹象表明其脆弱性：7 月份的热浪期间，弗吉尼亚州北部所谓“数据中心走廊”的一条高压输电线路上的设备发生故障。多个数据中心切换到备用电源，导致电网断电 3000 兆瓦——需求骤降幅度之大，甚至引发了从芝加哥到迈阿密的电力波动。

Riley Robinson/《基督教科学箴言报》/美联社

州立法机构有可能介入，迫使州监管机构对开发商施加更多限制。

弗吉尼亚州议会可能会通过一项法令，指示州议会考虑替代路线或地下方案——这是一项成本高昂且后勤方面具有挑战性的方案，一些居民一直力推该方案，但 Valley Link 认为在这种情况下不可行。

在西弗吉尼亚州，至少有一位州代表候选人，民主党人珍妮·萨克，正在积极开展竞选活动，力图改变州监管委员会的结构，使其对选民的需求做出更大回应。

监管机构——公共服务委员会——也有可能否决这两个项目。西弗吉尼亚州的一位政府工程师已经建议委员会驳回MARL的申请，因为该项目“没有”给西弗吉尼亚州居民带来任何好处。但弗吉尼亚州皮埃蒙特环境委员会的基础设施政策分析师迈克尔·巴伯表示，这是否会导致项目夭折尚不明确。该委员会反对这条输电线路。PJM公司可能会在法庭上对该决定提出质疑，但由于该领域的判例法尚不完善，因此无法对结果做出任何预测。

即使这样也无法解决电网可靠性问题，因为在下一个州，大量的数据中心继续消耗电力。

“归根结底，委员会的职责是确保可靠性，”长期代表弗吉尼亚州环境和清洁能源倡导者进行游说的丹·霍姆斯说。“到了关键时刻，我认为我们会看到审批通过。”

数据中心联盟的 Aaron Tinjum 表示，劳登县的电力短缺已经迫使一些数据中心迁往其他市场。

Tinjum表示：“劳登县的种种限制促使数据中心的发展转移到弗吉尼亚州的其他地区以及佐治亚州等快速增长的市场。”

在俄亥俄州，PJM 已经发出招标邀请，并接受了一项新建四条 765 千伏输电线路的提案，以满足当地的电力需求。

劳登县早在近二十年前就开始吸引数据中心入驻，因为该县拥有丰富的光纤基础设施，而且数据中心有望带来巨额税收，同时又不会增加学生人数或通勤交通压力。如今，数据中心贡献了该县近40%的税收，不仅用于资助学校和社区中心，还能使房产税增长速度低于周边地区。

官员们未能预料到的是电力需求增长的规模和速度。自2025年起担任劳登县委员会副主席的迈克·特纳表示，2022年发生了一系列难以预料的事件，可谓是“完美风暴”：疫情期间人们向Zoom等数字空间的社交迁移持续存在；州内主要电力供应商严重低估了电力需求；以及ChatGPT的出现。

从2021年到2025年，劳登县的能源消耗增长了233%，超过5吉瓦。根据特纳公司最近的一项研究，到2030年，由于人工智能的需求，该县“很容易需要20-30吉瓦的电力”。

安娜·莫尼梅克/盖蒂图片社/档案照片

“谁也无法预料到这一点。这是一次历史性的巨变，”特纳告诉CNN。

Tinjum 表示，该地区一些已经获得批准并建成的数据中心，由于电力不足，现在面临着一年或更长时间的等待时间才能接入电网。

即使是 Valley Link 和 MARL 输送的电力也可能不够。

分析人士表示，对于单一私营企业的电力需求而言，没有其他类似的例子可以解释北弗吉尼亚数据中心目前所预示的那种以征用权威胁进行土地征用的现象。

“将电网连接起来的复杂监管体系并非为这种情况而设计的，在这种情况下，一个地方政府可以允许某些事情发生，结果在 18 个月后，电网上的一个点就出现了相当于一座城市在 100 年间自然形成的用电需求量，”巴伯说。

这场冲突引发了关于数据中心选址控制权和成本承担者的激烈辩论。纽约州州长已全面暂停数据中心建设，弗吉尼亚州的一些官员，例如佩里，也呼吁采取类似措施。

弗吉尼亚州州长阿比盖尔·斯潘伯格一直拒绝全州范围内的暂停令。劳登县正在考虑撤销一些已获批准的项目，而一些县领导则希望获得否决超出可用电力容量项目的权力。西弗吉尼亚州则采取了相反的做法，剥夺了地方政府的权力。

与此同时，联邦监管机构已责令国家可靠性官员在 2026 年底前制定将大型计算负荷连接到主电力系统的标准，但这些规则尚未制定。

业内人士认为，数据中心是现代互联网运转的基础。尽管越来越多的数据中心用于训练人工智能模型——其耗电量远超其他功能——但许多现有设施仍为医疗保健数据、网上银行等关键功能提供云存储，更不用说视频和音乐流媒体服务了。唐纳德·特朗普总统曾表示，数据中心将带来“比工业革命更强劲”的经济增长。

无论美国民众在调查数据中表现出怎样的矛盾心理，他们对人工智能服务的需求并未放缓。皮尤研究中心最近的数据显示，约有一半的美国成年人表示正在使用人工智能聊天机器人。数据中心联盟（数据中心的主要行业协会）经常引用研究结果，指出美国家庭平均拥有21台联网设备；皮尤研究中心的研究也发现，三分之一的美国人家中至少拥有一台使用人工智能技术的智能设备。

在社交媒体上，越来越常见到人工智能生成的图像反对数据中心和新的输电线路项目。

对于像金默林这样的人来说，这在美国农村是一个熟悉的故事：采掘业将宝贵的资源从山区运往沿海的富裕社区，留下的只有伤痕。

“我们现在在这里，为我们自己的土地上的权利而战，”凯默林说着，她的服务犬把下巴搁在她的大腿上。“我们曾为你们而战。现在谁来为我们而战？”

附近，猪在吃草，鸡在刨土，雪兰多河在下方低语——她和丈夫担心输电线路会将这片世外桃源永久分割开来。