Despite mounting opposition, the Department of Energy (DoE) is crafting a dedicated power strategy for the proposed Pax Silica hub to ensure its massive electricity requirements are met without straining supply for households and businesses.

At a media briefing on Tuesday, Energy Secretary Sharon S. Garin said the agency is drafting a department circular that will establish the framework for supplying electricity to hyperscale data centers and technology hubs, whose demand could reach several thousand megawatts.

“Right now we are drafting a circular ..like what to do to put power in a data center or hub. There are several options,” Garin said.

Sufficient capacity

She stressed that the country has sufficient capacity to support projects of varying sizes, provided consumer interests remain protected.

“I just want to emphasize whether it’s 50 megawatts (MW), 100 MW, or 5,000 MW. We can supply that, but we just need to make sure that anything we do to power a data center or hub will not put the rest of the country at a disadvantage so that our consumers have protection here,” Garin said.

Energy Undersecretary Rowena Cristina Guevara said the DoE is considering embedded generation as the fastest way to energize Pax Silica, allowing dedicated power plants to be built within or adjacent to the development instead of relying on electricity transmitted over long distances.

“One of the things that we could immediately do if we have contractors who are willing to locate at the hub if they can identify the capacity that they would need is to do what we call embedded generation because it’s the easiest part,” Guevara said.

“You will not need to transmit it from a faraway place if it’s already there at the location of the hub because the allocated area for this project is large. So that’s the first step.”