# Northern Virginia's Data Center Industry Is Booming

<https://dcist.com/story/23/09/01/northern-virginia-data-center-report/>

- Host: [dcist.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/dcist.com/)
- Saved: September 10, 2023 (2023-09-11T02:52:01Z)
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## What Jamie wrote

Northern Virginia is where many of the largest cloud providers host datacenter. Hello AWS US-East-1! 👋 But it isn't just the cloud, there are a large number of data center facilities in that area. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with why America Online was there.

> Hartnett attributes the region’s continued global dominance in the industry to a combination of factors: favorable state tax incentives for the industry, a skilled workforce, access to relatively cheap electricity and land, and, most significantly, an extensive fiber network that dates to the region’s role as the birthplace of the internet.
> 
> All that has resulted in Northern Virginia’s staggering 47.7 million square feet of data center space, with 6.7 million square feet under construction and another 45 million planned.

Nearly 50 million square feet of space, and the growth continues.

This concentration is probably helpful in some ways. Imagine how many of the worlds most expert power and cooling technicians are in that area. Or the network engineering talent. If you love technology and don't want to get rid of the Leatherman on your belt, Virginia is the place to be! 

But this level of concentration seems like a bad idea too. How do you get that much power into such a small space. And colocation risk alone is bad for all sorts of reasons — natural disasters, terrorist activity, military target.

It would be great to see a microdatacenter movement, powered by renewable energy. Take the computers to where the wind and sun are. But the efficiencies of "Virginia Scale" are hard to overcome.

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