Prominent Syracuse developer plans an electricity-gulping data center in suburbs

Lysander, N.Y. – On 120 acres of vacant land in suburban Lysander, a well-known Onondaga County developer plans to build a data center that could consume as much electricity as roughly 200,000 average households.

Ranalli Super DC, LLC, a company controlled by James Ranalli of United Auto Supply, has requested a connection to the electric transmission network that would allow it to draw up to 300 megawatts for a data center, according to the New York Independent System Operator, which runs the electric grid.

That’s nearly two-thirds as much power as would be used by the first chip fab planned by Micron Technology 12 miles down the road in Clay. The initial Micron fab, an energy-intensive factory the size of 10 football fields, plans to draw 480 megawatts.

Ranalli declined to talk about his project. Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said the plan for a data center is at a very early stage.

“I don’t know exactly where the project stands,’’ McMahon said. “I do know this site is in the process of being permitted for a high-tech use like that related to the energy. I think it’s a strong candidate to get the necessary energy upgrades, where you could do that type of project there.’’

So far, the only sign of Ranalli’s plan appears to be its application to the NYISO to connect to the grid. Lysander Supervisor Kevin Rode said he was not aware of any recent permit application filed with the town by Ranalli Super DC.

The developer’s request to tie into the electric grid could take a long time to process, in part because the New York Independent System Operator has been inundated with requests from data centers. Ranalli Super DC is projected to connect to the grid in 2028.

The Lysander site, near the intersection of Route 48 and Hencle Boulevard, has the advantage of being near a 345-KV, high-voltage transmission line that runs from Fairport, in Monroe County, to the Clay substation across the street from Micron.

Four years ago, Ranalli Super DC proposed a different project at the site. Ranalli sought to build a 350,000-square-foot auto parts warehouse at the property,which is zoned industrial. After facing opposition from neighbors, the company withdrew its plan in 2023.

Ranalli is one of Syracuse’s biggest real estate developers. He’s also the CEO of United Auto Supply, a family-owned Syracuse company that employs 1,200 people in 34 locations in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Although NYISO officials classify the Ranalli project as a data center, McMahon said the site has potential to be used for a variety of high-tech functions if it gets approval for 300 megawatts of electric service.

“I think if you can get the energy, it opens it up to more than just a data center,’’ McMahon said.

Officials at the NYISO said they could not provide details about the proposed data center. Before approving the project’s connection to the system, the NYISO will gather information from the developer on how the facility would operate and will evaluate the impact that could have on the grid.

Those calculations are becoming increasingly difficult.

‘Profound reliability challenges’

NYISO has been hit this year with a tidal wave of requests from data centers like the one proposed by Ranalli, officials said. The surge of proposed projects – some of which will be built, others of which may not be – is raising concerns at the NYISO about the potential for future blackouts if the state doesn’t add generating facilities at a far faster pace than at present.

In its latest Comprehensive Reliability Plan issued Friday, the NYISO said the combination of surging demand and lagging power plant capacity could lead to shortfalls in as little as three to five years.

“New York’s electric system faces an era of profound reliability challenges,” the plan stated.

Ranalli’s project is one of more than two dozen energy-intensive facilities that have asked to connect to the grid in just the past year. Nearly all of them are data centers. They are seeking a combined 10,000 megawatts of power. That’s roughly one-quarter of the state’s total capacity and more than three times the combined output of New York’s four nuclear reactors.

“The number of large loads, and specifically data centers, is growing exponentially,’’ said Kevin Lanahan, a vice president at the NYISO.

The surge of data center requests comes on the heels of several big manufacturing projects, including Micron, that will also strain the grid. Micron, whose interconnection request dates back two years, is requesting 1,056 megawatts for the first two of four chip fabs planned in Clay.

The proposed Lysander data center likely would not be the last to come to Onondaga County.

Data centers, which fuel artificial intelligence and provide the backbone for much of the modern economy, are popping up across the nation. In general, they are buildings packed with computer equipment such as servers, storage devices, routers and switches. They require lots of electricity, both to run the equipment and to keep it cool.

U.S. data centers used 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023 – 4.4% of the nation’s total – according to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. By 2028, they are expected to account for up to 12% of total electricity usage.

Estimates vary on how close data centers usually come to using their full power allocation. Several reports suggest the range is somewhere between 50% and 80%. At those rates of usage, the Lysander facility would use as much electricity as 175,000 to 280,000 average households in National Grid’s Upstate service territory.

Developers often face local opposition when they seek to build data centers.

In the Tompkins County town of Lansing, for example, the Sierra Club and others oppose a pending application for a data campus on the site of a shuttered coal-fired power plant on Cayuga Lake. Among other things, opponents argue that the project’s heavy energy use could drive up electric rates and increase greenhouse gas emissions. The developer, TeraWulf, has said it would invest $15 million in electric system upgrades and would curtail usage during periods of peak demand.

Similar opposition has greeted proposed data centers in Genesee County, Otsego County, and other locations around the state.

A less predictable grid

Data centers are not the only reason the New York electric grid faces potential shortfalls. Increasing adoption of electric vehicles and electric heating systems also pose a challenge.

The likelihood of skyrocketing demand for electricity comes at a critical time as New York energy officials struggle to shore up one of the nation’s oldest electric systems.

As grid operators try to anticipate which data centers will actually get built, they also have to plan for the likely retirement – or catastrophic failure – of aging power plants that are increasingly unreliable.

The NYISO has been sounding steadily louder alarms about the state of the electric system. In the Comprehensive Reliability Plan, it points to several concerns:

• The state’s fleet of power plants is among the oldest in the nation. Natural gas-fired generators provide nearly half the state’s power, but a quarter of them are more than 50 years old, making them susceptible to retirement or unplanned shutdowns. New York also relies on three of the nation’s oldest nuclear reactors.
• New York has not built new generating capacity fast enough to keep up with power plant retirements, let alone to accommodate growth. Since 2019, the state has added 2,274 megawatts while 4,315 megawatts have been retired.
• New York state typically imports more than 10% of its power from neighboring electric systems in New England, Pennsylvania and Canada. But those systems face similar struggles to supply growing demand, which could put imports at risk.
• Demand for electricity is poised to skyrocket. Data centers and large industrial customers, led by Micron, are lining up to connect to the grid at an alarming rate. The size and number of proposed new data centers and other large customers far outpaces the projected growth of generating plants and transmission lines.

“The recent increase of interconnection requests for large load projects poses a risk to reliability as the magnitude and speed of these requests are far exceeding that of additional resources that would be needed to serve them,’’ the report stated.

Uncertainty over the future growth of data centers has forced the ISO to forecast a range of scenarios for future planning.

If all of the proposed large loads come online as scheduled, the electric grid could run out of spare capacity and become prone to blackouts as early as 2027 or 2028, the Comprehensive Reliability Plan says. If none of the projects gets built, that timeline gets extended until 2034, the agency predicts.

Either way, given the length of time it takes to plan and build new power plants and transmission lines, the situation is urgent, the NYISO said.

“Most plausible futures point to significant reliability shortfalls within the next 10 years,’’ the organization said.

Staff writer Tim Knauss can be reached at: email|Twitter| 315-470-3023.