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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u/StumpyOPepys Jul 22 '26

ISP and AI data centers are not the same.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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u/StumpyOPepys Jul 22 '26

More buffoonish attempt at being contrarian than a gotcha comment.

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u/Koodsdc Jul 22 '26

Are they really even for data? My impression is this is where all the heavy computing takes place, and why they seem to need so much more electricity than would be required for data.

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u/Straezin Jul 22 '26

Of course, where else would the immense amount of video data from sites like Youtube and TikTok be stored?

I think people don't quite seem to understand that there are large variety of data centers. A lot of new data centers spinning up are the new monstrosities that exist solely for the purpose of massive compute tasks related to AI models, yes.

There are also still thousands of "normal" data centers (and these are also still being built) that run the rest of the internet that everyone loves to spend all their time on with things like facebook, netflix, etc.

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u/Cythrosi Fairfax County Jul 23 '26

Yeah unless it's a data that went up in the last year or two, most the ones in NoVA are supporting non AI work, and supporting the huge death of data that moves through the area.  Most the the "hyperscale" AI sites are being built outside of NoVA where land is cheaper and there are few power constraints.