Maintenance in progress

on july 22 a transmission fault at dominion energy in virginia caused a cluster of data centers to switch instantly to backup power, removing roughly 3 gigawatts of demand from the grid in one moment and producing a measurable frequency and voltage disturbance across the eastern interconnection, which serves over 100 million homes. the grid rebalanced in about ten minutes. structurally this is new: a private computing cluster is now large enough that its self-protective reflex registers as a continental electrical event.

north american grid analysis