Great posts by SeeGeeWhy.
One of the projects I'm working on is in a 'data center' park near Reno. The size of these facilities is unlike anything I've seen in my life. I was as shocked as I was the first time I drove through Sherwood Park and saw the size of the refineries.
One of the emerging issues is the impact that these data centers are having on electricity costs. Arizona is looking at setting a separate
tariff for data center customers and they are driving up power prices/causing supply shortages in
Washington state.
The massive loads of these data centers are suspected to cause
power system harmonics issues that will also need addressing. I do think that this is very similar to the issues Alberta is experiencing with inverter based resources causing frequency issues. Both of these are engineering challenges that are fixable, but it's something that I am keeping an eye on.