Data Center Alley experienced a power spike which revealed the potential U.S. electrical grid overload from Big Data infrastructure while prompting regulatory agencies to investigate and introduce changes to protect the power grid.

Views about increasing power requirements of Big Data facilities have heightened since a recent outage occurred at Virginia's Data Center Alley. A power surge occurred last summer when sixty data centers disconnected suddenly from the electric grid which required immediate response from PJM and Dominion Energy for emergency blackout prevention.

A surge protector failure during the incident revealed weak points in the U.S. electricity network while data centers grew to analyze enormous amounts of information for AI and crypto currency operations. Various industry authorities state that increasing Big Data operations energy requirements harm the stability of electric grids.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation launched a task force to evaluate unapproved power disconnections performed by data centers and crypto miners. The projected tripled growth of data center energy consumption during the following decade has encouraged regulators to introduce more demanding reliability standards.

Grid operators recommend that data centers maintain electrical voltage constantly but Big Data operators state their equipment could experience damage from such requirements. The crucial requirement for Big Data development and digital infrastructure future will be the proper balance between energy efficiency and grid stability due to increasing computing demands.