4 ms·

I think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers. 1. Local gove

I think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers. 1. Local governments can require that if the data center peak load is 1.0GW, they must provision transmission and generation capacity for the local region of 1.2GW; the extra power can be given to the neighbors at substantial discount. 2. Construct a public swimming complex nearby, heated with waste data center heat. 3. Local governments can enforce strict limits on environmental noise at the property boundary. I've personally stood right next to a 150MW-class datacenter and experienced sound levels less than traffic from a typical suburban 4-lane street; making the datacenter quieter than any other industrial use is a choice the builder can make if they have the right incentives. Setup directional microphones around the perimeter, and fine them $25,000 per minute per dB above the agreed threshold. Distribute the fines to the neighbors. Failure to pay promptly means the sheriff shuts down the power. All of these options are far cheaper than launching the data center into space...

wahern 3mo ago
[flagged]
- dozerly 3mo ago
  Spoken like someone that will not have a data center built near them at their expense in the near future
  - phil21 3mo ago
    Literally have lived within 1500 feet of a datacenter. Zero of my my non techie friends ever knew. It’s a non-issue. It’s like complaining about a vacant but well maintained warehouse next door. If you mean living next door to a power plant? Absolutely. But that is a different topic.
    - dozerly 3mo ago
      Well, because of lack of infrastructure a lot of these data centers are power plants as well, and will continue to be without larger scale buildout of energy infrastructure. It’s not a non-issue right now.
- GlacierFox 3mo ago
  [flagged]
- lokar 3mo ago
  The noise issue is not irrational. But, they should establish objective criteria for noise (at various distances, frequencies and frequency variation) Issues around the cost of infrastructure upgrades being spread over all rate payers are not universal, and can be corrected.
  - lostlogin 3mo ago
    > The noise issue is not irrational. It’s quite the thing to say it’s irrational whilst acknowledging you are insensitive to sounds.
- mukbangpervert 3mo ago
  It's inaccurate to claim that the opposition is "completely irrational". One _extremely_ rational and common reason that people oppose these projects is that they can bid-up the energy cost in their regions, meaning that one of the residents biggest monthly bills gets bigger. A second one goes around pollution and noise, particularly when the AI DataCenter is using "portable" gas turbines or similar. Solutions are hard, but possible... so long as the decision makers are able to recognize that much of the opposition is quite rational, and that the deals struck need to accommodate the legitimate and rational concerns, while avoiding getting hung up by true nonsense.
  - seanmcdirmid 3mo ago
    In theory, rising energy prices would encourage more investment in capacity increases, that would then real a new equilibrium and so on. In theory of course, energy markets are so distorted now who knows. Having AI data centers bring their own power or power investments is probably going to be necessary.
  - consensus1 3mo ago
    Residential electricity rates don't get "bid up" like that. Increases typically must be approved by the government and have to be justified by expenses rather than market prices. Ashburn VA, which has more data centers than anywhere else, actually pays below US average rates.
    - annzabelle 3mo ago
      Growing up near Ashburn makes every anti data center argument feel like crazy land. From my perspective when I lived there, they were somewhat ugly large boxes that paid county tax and raised land value. I never noticed any kind of noise from them, though they were largely on industrially zoned land right by the airport. Also gave us single digit ping. Electricity rates are below the national average. Now that I'm an adult I have several friends employed in the industry, mostly in cooling system automation.
      - 3mo ago
- annzabelle 3mo ago
  I grew up right by Ashburn, Virginia, which has the largest concentration of hyperscale data centers in the world. I rarely heard of organized opposition to them until they became a politically charged issue and associated with white collar layoffs. I never once noticed significant noise from any of them - they are nearly all on the opposite side of a wide road from the nearest housing, and the road is louder than the data center. There is enough electric supply in the region that they almost never run the gas turbine generators. As a way of growing the industrial tax base of an area, they are one of the least dirty ways to use industrially zoned land, though they don't produce as many long term jobs. There is a big data center construction and design industry in that region, and it did pull Amazon to open HQ2 nearby, but those are both first mover effects.
  - galaxyLogic 3mo ago
    Data-centers should be required to provide their own clean energy plus some extra for the community. That would also create clean-energy jobs.
    - phil21 3mo ago
      Why? If you want this policy make it for the entire grid, not some random consumer. Electricity should function as a common carrier like any other utility. If you want to pay for the watts you get the watts regardless of who you happen to be.
- austin-cheney 3mo ago
  I oppose the data centers because they drive up utility costs and contribute to the instability of the local electrical grid. I get pain from them and no benefits. I really don’t want most of the unprofitable AI foolishness that is being forced on us.
  - phil21 3mo ago
    What instability has been attributed towards datacenter - or even any - large 24x7 predictable load industrial consumers of electricity in your area? The exact opposite is typically true, so this is surprising to me!
    - austin-cheney 3mo ago
      Grid instability, which includes an increasing frequency of brown outs. It’s the primary reason residential owners are heavily investing in solar panels. If you don’t know where I live how can you know if my claim is true or not?
      - phil21 3mo ago
        Because I have been monitoring this as a weird interest of mine now for 20 years or more. To the point of absurdity. I would be very surprised to hear of a location in the US that is experiencing grid instability due to recent increases in industrial scale electric usage. I 100% refute your claim that grid instability is the primary reason folks in the US are installing solar. You will be still seen as a crazy prepper type if you call a company and tell them you don’t care about the financials penciling out, and only want it for potential blackouts. Assuming you are not in California of course - which I assume not since none of those instability problems have to do with industry so it’s not relevant to this discussion. Generally speaking - if you want to live in a place with a stable grid, you will seek out a spot that has heavy industry in the region. These energy consumers stabilize the grid for residential folks. Especially datacenters since those tend to come with emergency backup and are the first to fall off the grid on a voluntary basis during peak usage events. I’m sure somewhere in the US exists where this is true since basically everything is true at a micro scale. I just do not see it as a wide scale issue.
- happytoexplain 3mo ago
  It's probably worth taking a step away and looking at your position when you find yourself starting with the political argument tropes (sounds like, "my opponents are simply crazy and stupid").
- robocat 2mo ago
  > minority of people ultra sensitive to noise misophonia can be severely disabling. Good overview: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/misophonia-beyond-sensory-sensitivity https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/misophonia-beyond-sensory-s... I've personally had a friend with misophonia (about subsonics) commit suicide (making it difficult to find out from them what was cause or correlation).
dozerly 3mo ago
All of these options require “extra” money to be spent, which even if it logically makes sense, will not happen when it’s shown companies can buy local politicians and continue anyway
adriand 3mo ago
None of these mitigations (although they’re good ideas) address what I think is the real issue here, which is that people don’t like AI. And why would they, when the dish being served by AI CEOs is job loss with a side of extinction risk. I think many data centre opponents understand that being opposed to AI is not sufficient to halt a local project, so it is noise, water use and power consumption that they latch onto - although, in jurisdictions without plentiful water and clean power, those two reasons are quite valid. In my own local community, there’s vocal opposition to a proposed data centre that is next to Lake Ontario, 500 metres from the nearest residential neighbourhood, on a brownfield site with 500 megawatts of clean power capacity. None of that makes a difference to those opposed.
- antonymoose 3mo ago
  In my area (South Carolina) - the opposition seems hyper fixated on “water use” with little or no conversation around electrical usage or even equitable utility rates. AI itself largely absent from the discourse.
  - dmitriy_ko 3mo ago
    Data centers use miniscular amount of water. Data center water use is a fake issue.
    - swed420 3mo ago
      I've long suspected that monied interests are seeding social media with weak arguments about water as a distraction, and people mindlessly re-share that as part of their identity. Then the other half can come along and "correct" them while the main issue of power is forgotten. Social media gets engagement, and capital gets its data centers. It's the same tired distraction pattern we've seen for a long time now in politics, and they keep rolling it out because it works.
      - happytoexplain 3mo ago
        What makes their actions mindless, exactly? Is the implication that what they've read is easily falsifiable by the average person? One of the fundamentals to society-scale problem solving is not to dismiss the masses as morons, as much as we often enjoy doing that. You must accept who society is composed of, or else you, by definition, can't fix their problems.
rileymat2 3mo ago
With low pitched data center noise does the decibel level tell the whole story? I thought it carried better and penetrated better than the db level would indicate.
- phil21 3mo ago
  What about fan noise is low pitched? I generally agree that I would not like to live across the street from a datacenter. Having worked inside of dozens of them, I could not care less if I lived half a mile from one. Most people who live within such a distance currently do not have a clue. At that point I would not even worry about the noise from the backup generators.
  - esseph 3mo ago
    It's the gas turbine generators at the massive DCs causing the big issue. There are dozens of them. Not your typical historical DC/colo or even 5yr ago hyperscaler DC.
    - phil21 3mo ago
      These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme. And I agree these specific projects are a major problem. It’s just not representative of the bigger picture when there are a dozen horrible projects against say 1000 total. The hyperbole is what gets my mom terrified of moving to a city that might allow a datacenter to be built 8 miles away from the place she was looking at.
      - danaris 2mo ago
        > These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme. I'm sure that will be a great consolation to the thousands of people who have to live near them. "Don't worry, your situation is very rare! That's why we don't have to do anything about it."
sm-silversight 3mo ago
Politics in the US reliably fail to arrive at reasonable conclusions like this. I don't know why.
kylehotchkiss 3mo ago
The engineer style snap to solution with no interest in the actual reasons many Americans are opposed to AI is one of the reasons Americans are opposed to AI

wahern 3mo ago

[flagged]

dozerly 3mo ago
Spoken like someone that will not have a data center built near them at their expense in the near future
- phil21 3mo ago
  Literally have lived within 1500 feet of a datacenter. Zero of my my non techie friends ever knew. It’s a non-issue. It’s like complaining about a vacant but well maintained warehouse next door. If you mean living next door to a power plant? Absolutely. But that is a different topic.
  - dozerly 3mo ago
    Well, because of lack of infrastructure a lot of these data centers are power plants as well, and will continue to be without larger scale buildout of energy infrastructure. It’s not a non-issue right now.
GlacierFox 3mo ago
[flagged]
lokar 3mo ago
The noise issue is not irrational. But, they should establish objective criteria for noise (at various distances, frequencies and frequency variation) Issues around the cost of infrastructure upgrades being spread over all rate payers are not universal, and can be corrected.
- lostlogin 3mo ago
  > The noise issue is not irrational. It’s quite the thing to say it’s irrational whilst acknowledging you are insensitive to sounds.
mukbangpervert 3mo ago
It's inaccurate to claim that the opposition is "completely irrational". One _extremely_ rational and common reason that people oppose these projects is that they can bid-up the energy cost in their regions, meaning that one of the residents biggest monthly bills gets bigger. A second one goes around pollution and noise, particularly when the AI DataCenter is using "portable" gas turbines or similar. Solutions are hard, but possible... so long as the decision makers are able to recognize that much of the opposition is quite rational, and that the deals struck need to accommodate the legitimate and rational concerns, while avoiding getting hung up by true nonsense.
- seanmcdirmid 3mo ago
  In theory, rising energy prices would encourage more investment in capacity increases, that would then real a new equilibrium and so on. In theory of course, energy markets are so distorted now who knows. Having AI data centers bring their own power or power investments is probably going to be necessary.
- consensus1 3mo ago
  Residential electricity rates don't get "bid up" like that. Increases typically must be approved by the government and have to be justified by expenses rather than market prices. Ashburn VA, which has more data centers than anywhere else, actually pays below US average rates.
  - annzabelle 3mo ago
    Growing up near Ashburn makes every anti data center argument feel like crazy land. From my perspective when I lived there, they were somewhat ugly large boxes that paid county tax and raised land value. I never noticed any kind of noise from them, though they were largely on industrially zoned land right by the airport. Also gave us single digit ping. Electricity rates are below the national average. Now that I'm an adult I have several friends employed in the industry, mostly in cooling system automation.
    - 3mo ago
annzabelle 3mo ago
I grew up right by Ashburn, Virginia, which has the largest concentration of hyperscale data centers in the world. I rarely heard of organized opposition to them until they became a politically charged issue and associated with white collar layoffs. I never once noticed significant noise from any of them - they are nearly all on the opposite side of a wide road from the nearest housing, and the road is louder than the data center. There is enough electric supply in the region that they almost never run the gas turbine generators. As a way of growing the industrial tax base of an area, they are one of the least dirty ways to use industrially zoned land, though they don't produce as many long term jobs. There is a big data center construction and design industry in that region, and it did pull Amazon to open HQ2 nearby, but those are both first mover effects.
- galaxyLogic 3mo ago
  Data-centers should be required to provide their own clean energy plus some extra for the community. That would also create clean-energy jobs.
  - phil21 3mo ago
    Why? If you want this policy make it for the entire grid, not some random consumer. Electricity should function as a common carrier like any other utility. If you want to pay for the watts you get the watts regardless of who you happen to be.
austin-cheney 3mo ago
I oppose the data centers because they drive up utility costs and contribute to the instability of the local electrical grid. I get pain from them and no benefits. I really don’t want most of the unprofitable AI foolishness that is being forced on us.
- phil21 3mo ago
  What instability has been attributed towards datacenter - or even any - large 24x7 predictable load industrial consumers of electricity in your area? The exact opposite is typically true, so this is surprising to me!
  - austin-cheney 3mo ago
    Grid instability, which includes an increasing frequency of brown outs. It’s the primary reason residential owners are heavily investing in solar panels. If you don’t know where I live how can you know if my claim is true or not?
    - phil21 3mo ago
      Because I have been monitoring this as a weird interest of mine now for 20 years or more. To the point of absurdity. I would be very surprised to hear of a location in the US that is experiencing grid instability due to recent increases in industrial scale electric usage. I 100% refute your claim that grid instability is the primary reason folks in the US are installing solar. You will be still seen as a crazy prepper type if you call a company and tell them you don’t care about the financials penciling out, and only want it for potential blackouts. Assuming you are not in California of course - which I assume not since none of those instability problems have to do with industry so it’s not relevant to this discussion. Generally speaking - if you want to live in a place with a stable grid, you will seek out a spot that has heavy industry in the region. These energy consumers stabilize the grid for residential folks. Especially datacenters since those tend to come with emergency backup and are the first to fall off the grid on a voluntary basis during peak usage events. I’m sure somewhere in the US exists where this is true since basically everything is true at a micro scale. I just do not see it as a wide scale issue.
happytoexplain 3mo ago
It's probably worth taking a step away and looking at your position when you find yourself starting with the political argument tropes (sounds like, "my opponents are simply crazy and stupid").
robocat 2mo ago
> minority of people ultra sensitive to noise misophonia can be severely disabling. Good overview: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/misophonia-beyond-sensory-sensitivity https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/misophonia-beyond-sensory-s... I've personally had a friend with misophonia (about subsonics) commit suicide (making it difficult to find out from them what was cause or correlation).

dozerly 3mo ago

All of these options require “extra” money to be spent, which even if it logically makes sense, will not happen when it’s shown companies can buy local politicians and continue anyway

adriand 3mo ago

None of these mitigations (although they’re good ideas) address what I think is the real issue here, which is that people don’t like AI. And why would they, when the dish being served by AI CEOs is job loss with a side of extinction risk. I think many data centre opponents understand that being opposed to AI is not sufficient to halt a local project, so it is noise, water use and power consumption that they latch onto - although, in jurisdictions without plentiful water and clean power, those two reasons are quite valid. In my own local community, there’s vocal opposition to a proposed data centre that is next to Lake Ontario, 500 metres from the nearest residential neighbourhood, on a brownfield site with 500 megawatts of clean power capacity. None of that makes a difference to those opposed.

antonymoose 3mo ago
In my area (South Carolina) - the opposition seems hyper fixated on “water use” with little or no conversation around electrical usage or even equitable utility rates. AI itself largely absent from the discourse.
- dmitriy_ko 3mo ago
  Data centers use miniscular amount of water. Data center water use is a fake issue.
  - swed420 3mo ago
    I've long suspected that monied interests are seeding social media with weak arguments about water as a distraction, and people mindlessly re-share that as part of their identity. Then the other half can come along and "correct" them while the main issue of power is forgotten. Social media gets engagement, and capital gets its data centers. It's the same tired distraction pattern we've seen for a long time now in politics, and they keep rolling it out because it works.
    - happytoexplain 3mo ago
      What makes their actions mindless, exactly? Is the implication that what they've read is easily falsifiable by the average person? One of the fundamentals to society-scale problem solving is not to dismiss the masses as morons, as much as we often enjoy doing that. You must accept who society is composed of, or else you, by definition, can't fix their problems.

rileymat2 3mo ago

With low pitched data center noise does the decibel level tell the whole story? I thought it carried better and penetrated better than the db level would indicate.

phil21 3mo ago
What about fan noise is low pitched? I generally agree that I would not like to live across the street from a datacenter. Having worked inside of dozens of them, I could not care less if I lived half a mile from one. Most people who live within such a distance currently do not have a clue. At that point I would not even worry about the noise from the backup generators.
- esseph 3mo ago
  It's the gas turbine generators at the massive DCs causing the big issue. There are dozens of them. Not your typical historical DC/colo or even 5yr ago hyperscaler DC.
  - phil21 3mo ago
    These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme. And I agree these specific projects are a major problem. It’s just not representative of the bigger picture when there are a dozen horrible projects against say 1000 total. The hyperbole is what gets my mom terrified of moving to a city that might allow a datacenter to be built 8 miles away from the place she was looking at.
    - danaris 2mo ago
      > These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme. I'm sure that will be a great consolation to the thousands of people who have to live near them. "Don't worry, your situation is very rare! That's why we don't have to do anything about it."

sm-silversight 3mo ago

Politics in the US reliably fail to arrive at reasonable conclusions like this. I don't know why.

kylehotchkiss 3mo ago

The engineer style snap to solution with no interest in the actual reasons many Americans are opposed to AI is one of the reasons Americans are opposed to AI