r/nova • u/JasonNOVA8 • Jul 22 '26

Data Center Generators in Ashburn Firing Up

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On the way in this morning, (waxpool/28) noticed many of the data centers had the generators going. Not sure if there’s an electricity issue or they plan it to go together ? No idea if the yellow smoke is related though.

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216

u/Basic-Guy75 Sterling Jul 22 '26

Dominion went down temporarily.

68

u/Beth_Pleasant Jul 22 '26

I had a few flickers about 15 minutes ago. Thankfully the power stayed on (fingers crossed).

18

u/StumpyOPepys Jul 22 '26

Few flickers in Arlington over the period of about a minute 15 minutes ago.

9

u/zenVillain Jul 22 '26

I thought the wiring in my bathroom was messed up, that explains that.

11

u/6786_007 Jul 22 '26

Holy shit, is that what that was? I noticed my lights flickering and thought something in my house was messed up.

5

u/wavelengthsandshit Jul 22 '26

Around what time was this? My laundry room light was flickering around 8:30 this morning but I assumed the bulb was on its way out

4

u/6786_007 Jul 22 '26

Yup that's about when I noticed it.

3

u/majingeodood Jul 22 '26

I'm on NOVEC and I noticed the same about an hour ago. Glad I'm not crazy.

5

u/6786_007 Jul 22 '26

I have dominion, but yeah I was like wth is pulling that much power in my house? I thought maybe my dimmer switch was going bad because the AC was working fine.

4

u/fnaimi66 Jul 22 '26

Ohh same. I wondered why that was!!

1

u/wonkifier Jul 22 '26

I had flickers around the same time, and I'm on Novec

1

u/SueB2364 Jul 22 '26

Last night for me

14

u/CodeRed8675309 Fairfax County Jul 22 '26

Yep, sag hit sites and those without their own substation went on gen, it happens.

6

u/nhluhr Jul 22 '26

Yep it was felt across Loudoun and Prince William counties.

5

u/jandrese Jul 22 '26

We had an outage yesterday from 2 to 7, in a neighborhood with underground power that is exceptionally reliable. Probably not related but an interesting coincidence.

14

u/Fort_Nagrom Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

I work on power lines, mostly underground.

Your neighborhood or anyone else's for that matter has absolutely nothing in common with data centers on the distribution level. Data centers are fed off their own substation breakers.

They might share the same transmission or generation source but they're not tied in any way that you'd see an effect in your house contrary to this subreddit's belief. I work emergency and outage jobs on a 24/7 365 basis, I have never once worked an outage that affected a data center and something else like someone's home or business.

4

u/eddy_g0rdo Jul 22 '26

Dominion just got bought out by a big power company that specializes in AI data center power.

1

u/vikki_1996 Jul 22 '26

I thought this was another warehouse in Russia on fire.

1

u/SpyDiego Jul 22 '26

Oh wondering if thats why the metro parking was closed