New Jersey officials said that the natural gas-powered generators, each the size of a tractor-trailer, were operating without permits.
When state inspectors visited a dusty construction site amid the farmland of southern New Jersey in late July, it was impossible to miss the 62 tractor-trailer-size generators powering one of the largest planned data centers on the Eastern Seaboard.
None of the 2,000-killowatt natural gas-powered generators had the required permits to be installed or to operate at the site. On Tuesday, New Jersey fined the data center’s operator, DataOne, $1.07 million for violating the state’s Air Pollution Control Act. The fine is the largest ever issued to the operator of a data center in New Jersey, state officials said.
Hyperscale data centers, like the one in Vineland, are built to serve the needs of global technology companies. These data centers are racing to find power faster than utility companies can build grid capacity. As a result, some data center developers are installing off-grid power sources, drawing more backlash from the public.
“This is not a free ride for anyone,” Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey said at a Climate Week discussion hosted by Heatmap News in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. “If they want to engage in building this out, it has to be a benefit to our communities in New Jersey.”
The data center campus in Vineland, slated for completion at the end of the year, will be a 2.6 million-square-foot complex requiring 350 megawatts of power, enough to power a medium-size city. Some of the complex is already in use, and it has been a magnet for complaints, beginning with the zoning process.
A group of homeowners has filed a federal lawsuit against DataOne citing persistent noise from the site. The Cumberland County Health Department has issued violation orders to DataOne for excessive noise.
