Last week, I wrote about the signals which Virginia’s Data Center Alley sends to power market participants: our particular cluster of data centers is effectively always-on, because the services it provides are also always-on. (This week, Halcyon re-launched its “Follow a docket” capability; anyone who wants to follow Virginia State Corporation Commission Docket PUR-2024-00144 can do so here.) To put the Northern Virginia utility and data center operator position more plainly: we run your 911 calls, and you don’t want those interrupted because of a notional benefit from flexing data center demand when the grid capacity is tight. Flex your training loads all you want, grid operators, but please be careful with backbone stuff in today’s telecommunications system.