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Back in 2009, Didi Caldwell was helping select a site for a paper manufacturing company that required 25 MW of electricity. At the time, that requirement was huge. Today, recent projects that Caldwell and her team of site selectors at Global Location Strategies (GLS) have sited required between 30 MW and 1 GW.
Caldwell has been analyzing and selecting sites for large manufacturing and heavy industrial projects for more than 25 years—16 of those as founder and CEO of GLS.
She says factors driving that increased electricity demand include bigger projects and more energy-intensive processes, like clean-technology manufacturing and data centers that power cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
“There’s still a similar number of projects being announced every year, but they’re much larger in terms of CapEx and number of jobs,” Caldwell said. “Typically, more CapEx means more equipment, which means you’re going to require more electricity.”
So, what’s Caldwell’s advice to her clients with electric-intensive projects?
“Start early,” she said. “Right now, we have a scarcity of sites with the energy infrastructure capacity that can be provided by the time clients are ready to start up. It’s not uncommon for us to hear things like 48 to 60 months to get the energy levels clients require.”
To utilities looking to meet companies’ high-energy demands, Caldwell advises, “Know your community’s existing site portfolio and how much energy you can get to those places.” She recommends determining how long it would take to get 10, 20, 50, or 100 MW to those sites. And then promote those sites that have large energy capacity.
Caldwell also advises energy providers to be proactive in helping their communities identify new sites and to participate in site readiness programs.
When Boviet Solar was looking for a location for its first North American solar panel manufacturing facility, Greenville, North Carolina, had an available building with room for expansion in Indigreen Corporate Park, an ElectriCities-certified Smart Site. The City’s public power provider, Greenville Utilities Commission (GUC), was in the process of extending transmission and adding a substation to the area—part of GUC’s efforts to systematically reinforce its transmission system, said Tony Cannon, GUC General Manager and CEO.
“We knew we had available property in that industrial area, so we wanted to make sure we had capacity available there,” he said.
For its facility, Boviet Solar required 10 MW of electricity in its first phase and 50 MW in the second. GUC is delivering.
“We were ready on Day 1 with all of their power needs,” Cannon said. “Price and availability, along with our reliability records, helped push us to the top of the list when it came to that load.”
Providing reliable electricity is a hallmark of public power communities.
“Public power cities and towns in North Carolina provide safe, affordable, and sustainable electricity with a reliability rating of 99.98%—more reliable than other power providers,” said Roy Jones, CEO of ElectriCities of North Carolina. ElectriCities is the membership organization that provides power supply and related critical services to over 70 community-owned electric systems in North Carolina.
“We’ve been closely tracking the changes in manufacturing and big data that are requiring more electricity to facilitate growth,” Jones said. “While these increasing power demands are certainly a challenge, we’re working with our public power communities across North Carolina to ensure that they can continue to compete for new industrial growth while providing the same levels of reliability and affordability.”
Back in Greenville, factoring in the economic impact of the jobs and investment Boviet Solar is bringing to the area, GUC’s Cannon said, “Making appropriate investments in your electric system ahead of time pays dividends in the long run.”
