N.B. Power wants flexibility from power-hungry data centres

N.B. Power says it’s not alarmed by the electricity needs of a proposed data centre in the Lorneville area of Saint John but will be looking for flexibility from such plants on their consumption.

A senior executive at the Crown utility also says there is no link between the proposed 400-megawatt natural gas plant it wants to see built in Tantramar and the data centre’s need for 190 megawatts.

“It wasn't anything to do with our planning around the gas plant,” Brad Coady, N.B. Power's chief commercial officer, said in an interview.

“In fact, if you rewind back the record, we were thinking about the gas plant long before I ever heard of any of these data centres that have been in media lately.”

Tantramar Green Party MLA Megan Mitton has alleged a link between the controversial plan for the gas plant, to be built by U.S.-based ProEnergy, and the data centre, a partnership between two U.S. companies, VoltaGrid and Beacon AI.

“It makes you wonder if this additional demand is why N.B. Power has invited a different American Trump donor’s company to burn fracked gas in Tantramar by 2028,” Mitton said in the legislature earlier this month.

The data centre would store data for artificial intelligence services, websites, apps and other operations.

Proponents say it would use 190 megawatts from its own on-site natural gas generation and 190 megawatts to come from N.B. Power — the latter the equivalent of about half what the utility would get from the gas plant.

N.B. Power said when it announced the gas plant that it was needed to head off a potential electricity shortfall three years from now due to population and economic growth.

Utility officials told a legislative committee in 2023 that the previous winter they faced an all-time peak demand for electricity that they came perilously close to not being able to meet.

Coady told CBC News that N.B. Power’s “modest growth” forecast for demand, its likeliest scenario, anticipates “fairly stable, fairly flat, low growth” of less than one per cent a year.

He said the utility will want agreements with data centres that would have them shut down, or rely exclusively on their own on-site power generation or battery storage, during peak demand periods.

“We're really leaning in to say, ‘Can we do flexible arrangements with these types of customers in a way that makes sense for New Brunswick?’” he said.

“If the answer is yes, then we have a pathway ahead. If the answer is no, maybe it's a check and adjustment, and further conversations need to be had.”