New microgrid to ensure Houston data center and network resilience

The construction of a new 17 MW microgrid for ViVaVerse Solutions, a colocation data center service provider, was announced this week.

Located in the former Compaq Computer/HPE headquarters in Houston, the 90-plus-acre ViVa Center campus is being reimagined as a mixed-use technology hub that will house a high-performance computing data center, more than 200 laboratory and critical infrastructure data.

The natural gas-powered microgrid will be built and operated by RPower, a primary and backup power solutions provider. RPower will manage ViVaVerse’s microgrid under a Resiliency-as-a-Service (RaaS) arrangement, a business model that provides reliable electricity to a business in the event of a grid outage.

Under this type of long-term service agreement, the RaaS developer installs, owns, operates and maintains the microgrid so that the customer can focus on their business rather than the electricity that powers their business. In return, the customer pays a fixed monthly fee.

“We are excited to partner with RPower on this groundbreaking initiative, which will power both high-performance computing infrastructure in Houston and the energy transition in Texas,” said Eduardo Morales, CEO of ViVaVerse Solutions and Morales Capital Group.

More power needed to power hungry data centers

Colocation data centers, like ViVa Center, are third parties that rent space to organizations for their computing hardware and storage devices. Also known as “colos,” operators are responsible for providing reliable power, cooling, bandwidth, and security to facilities, which have more robust infrastructure than typically found in the on-site data center. company website.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges that campers will face in the years to come is power, or more precisely, the lack of power.

The growing demand for artificial intelligence-based and high-performance computing technologies, which include supercomputers as well as aggregated computing “clusters,” is creating an energy problem for the time being.

Significant amounts of electricity are required not only to power computers, but also for cooling systems and other critical infrastructure in a data center.

The power gap facing the industry is significant. In fact, Goldman Sachs estimates that by 2030, the United States could need to add as much as 47 GW of power generation capacity just to support new data centers coming online.

To ensure they have the power and reliability they need, many data center operators are turning to on-grid and off-grid microgrids. Not only do microgrids provide resilience, they can also reduce emissions, another major issue for data centers.

The ViVa Center’s RPower microgrid will use natural gas generators.

“Our natural gas backup generation system offers the same reliability and performance as traditional diesel systems, but with a 98% reduction in emissions,” said Jeff Starcher, CEO of RPower.

A microgrid will support the local electricity network

The ViVa Center microgrid is expected to go live by the end of the year, and when it comes online, it will do more than provide resiliency to ViVaVerse’s campus operations.

Starcher added that the microgrid would further enable the state’s energy transition to a carbon-free future.

The microgrid will also support the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market, providing additional capacity and ancillary services to the local grid and mitigating some of the volatility associated with renewable generation.

ERCOT, the grid operator for about 90 percent of the state, has significantly increased its integration of renewable energy in recent years. A 2023 study found that Texas produced more renewable energy than any other state – and nearly 55% more than second-place California.

“RPower’s pioneering microgrid will not only provide critical N+1 resilience to our data center operations, but will also contribute to the local community by providing needed capacity during periods of peak demand when the power grid is downgraded. strained,” Morales said.

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