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Far north cool places seem logical for data centers. Not Texas and Arizona. Why?
by api 17d ago
Far north cool places seem logical for data centers.
Not Texas and Arizona. Why?
- faitswulff 17d agoPolitics means putting job creating infrastructure projects in red states to curry favor with Republican demographics.
- mcmcmc 17d agoCalling data centers “job creating infrastructure” seems like a bit of an oxymoron tbh
- zdragnar 17d agoThe company my brother works for (fairly small) is involved in the construction and maintenance of the electrical side of the data grid. Apparently they need to hire at least 20 people a month for the foreseeable future to keep up with demand, as they're already booked out with projects into 2030 or something like that. Overall, it's not exactly a ton of jobs for how much money is going into them, but it isn't nothing.
- mcmcmc 17d ago> Overall, it's not exactly a ton of jobs for how much money is going into them, but it isn't nothing. I’m not disputing that data center buildouts will have some localized job creation, but the net effect of all those data centers will be overwhelmingly negative on employment if everything the AI companies are saying is true
- Lerc 17d agoIf everything the AI companies are saying is true, we'll all be living in a utopia while simultaneously annihilated by a rogue AI. It will be pretty, but rather quiet.
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- jryle70 16d ago> Calling data centers “job creating infrastructure” seems like a bit of an oxymoron That's your original point, which is wrong since, as you admitted, data center boom is clearly creating jobs. If you meant those jobs are offset by the negative effect of AI in general if we believe AI companies, a study by Anthropic was actively discussed here a few days ago. TLDR: they don't believe there will be mass unemployment because of AI https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49626373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49626373
- mcmcmc 16d ago“Job-creating infrastructure” would be infrastructure that creates jobs. A chamber of commerce, small business lenders, startup accelerators etc. Building infrastructure of any kind has a temporary positive effect on employment. The builder jobs have nothing to do with the purpose of the infrastructure. I’m sure Anthropic is saying that now, but there’s no escaping the fact that they and OpenAI repeatedly harped on how it would eliminate mass amounts of jobs for years. Or the mass layoffs blamed on AI that we have already seen.
- jryle70 16d ago> “Job-creating infrastructure” would be infrastructure that creates jobs. A chamber of commerce, small business lenders, startup accelerators etc. Such a bizarre logic. Since when a chamber of commerce or startup accelerators are infrastructure? Railways or roads are job creating infrastructure, did you see road building or maintenance jobs disappear? Same with data centers, themselves and the infrastructure to support them such as energy. > I’m sure Anthropic is saying that now, but there’s no escaping the fact that they and OpenAI repeatedly harped on how it would eliminate mass amounts of jobs for years This is what you said earlier: "but the net effect of all those data centers will be overwhelmingly negative on employment if everything the AI companies are saying is true" Anthropic is evidently not saying that. Now you're saying maybe they are not but they imply to, or hope for that. Weasel words, don't you think? I too believe that AI will cause massive uncertainty in society. However anyone who pretends to know with any certainty how our AI shaped future will be is just that, pretentious.
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- mitxela 16d agoThe important thing is that they think it is.
- happosai 17d agoRepublican south states have also decided to reject science and embrace fossil fuels - global warming shall be the problem of our grandchildren, feel free to build as many gas turbines as you wish!
- api 16d agoYeah I know. Sadly, burning gas and coal is still the cheapest easiest way to rapidly deploy a lot of power, and Texas is all about it. Renewables can compete but take longer to build. Nuclear is more expensive and takes forever to build. Maybe SMRs will happen but I’m not holding my breath. It’s harder than it sounds to scale that.
- a34729t 16d agoSMR are a pipe dream IMO. Proper modern reactors can be built relatively quickly (see China using French designs) but our lawyer-driven system makes it impossible to build infrastructure).
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- seany 17d ago* good access to power (this might not mean the cheapest always, but actually getting to it. * easy permitting * lots of space
- topato 17d agoWhich makes Arizona an interesting place to place any new builds of any sort of data center. They’ve been talking about the scarcity of resources there for years, and it’s currently in an escalating tailspin of abundance. Power is cheap as hell there, but once the water dries up… things might change quickly.
- whall6 17d agoNew Gen data centers are closed loop and don’t use water at nearly the same rate as previous generations
- hn993302 17d agoGot an example? I'm pretty sure new datacenters are still using cooling towers.
- SteveNuts 17d agoQTS is building a second campus in Chicago with closed loop https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop-cooling-to-eliminate-ongoing-water-use/ https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop...
- hn993302 17d agoOk, those are truly closed loop. As in, they use ambient cooling or active chillers. I've seen too many cooling tower sites described as closed-loop because the internal system is.
- nomel 17d agoThere's also a power generation water cost though! Something like 500g/MWh for gas/coal/nuclear (~70% of power in AZ), so a huge xAI datacenter (Colossus 2, ~1 GW/h) would use ~700 MW of this type, or ~350k gallons of water an hour, which would be 0.2% of the Colorado rivers flow rate last year. I don't know if that's significant.
- whall6 17d ago1. Cheap natural resource 2. Fiber connectivity 3. Low population density 4. Favorable regulatory environment Depending on how far north you mean, you lose all or all but one of the above.
- augment_me 17d agoSouthern states have more republicans so it's easier to sell public land or draw this kind of contracts without a massive community backlash
- gpt5 17d agoNot everything is partisan, and land is only a small factor in where to decide to place a data centers. The top 4 out of 5 states with the most data centers are blue states. The reason Texas is experiencing a boom in data centers is friendlier power grid policies to data centers (similar to why Google is building in Finland), in combination with (relatively small) tax incentives.
- bsder 17d agoUnions. Northeastern states expect that you will use union labor to build your projects or they will shut you down. Pennsylvania, for example, was one of the few places to take Walmart to task for employing illegal labor. Texas and Arizona are notoriously anti-union and anti-resident/pro-corporation.
- yellowapple 17d agoThe requirement to use union labor for construction hasn't stopped datacenter buildouts here in Nevada.
- andsoitis 16d ago> Texas … notoriously … anti-resident What do you mean Texas is anti-resident?
- hn993302 17d agoGoogle claims that 10% of its power goes to non-computing overhead. Even if that were 0 somewhere else, ok how much more expensive is the power in that area, probably more than 11%. And I don't know how much they spend on power to begin with, relative to the other costs that probably go up.
- AngryData 17d agoPerhaps the extra cost in freeze proofing certain systems and the inability to rely on evaporative cooling techniques? The availability of power in the winter might be a problem too when northern home's power and energy usage all ramp up. In the summer you need nearly the same amount of capacity for cooling as the south so there isn't much savings there.
- yellowapple 17d agoArizona is conducive to abundant solar power, so that'd be a good reason to build there. Similar deal here in Nevada (with the added bonus of Nevada being a giant blob of geothermal heat, further driving renewable energy supply and therefore datacenter attractiveness).
- epistasis 17d agoNuclear is the most expensive form of clean energy. It is likely to bankrupt at least one company. When Finland contracted with France to build their latest reactor, they wisely had a fixed price contract where the French company would pay for const overruns. At groundbreaking in 2005, they planned for a 2009 completion. In 2016 it bankrupted Areva, with the French government owned EDG saving parts of the company crucial to the nation. It wasn't completed u tip 2023: https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/25890-hs-olkiluoto-3-has-been-a-financial-catastrophe-for-areva-siemens.html https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2... When the US last decided to build nuclear, Westinghouse AP1000s, two in South Carolina and two in Georgia, it resulted in the bankruptcy on Westinghouse, putting all of Toshiba, its owner, at risk: https://www.csis.org/analysis/westinghouses-bankruptcy-and-its-implications https://www.csis.org/analysis/westinghouses-bankruptcy-and-i... The two South Carolina reactors were abandoned at the cost of a substantial fraction of the build cost, in the billions, and utility executives went to jail for deception about it. Georgia finished its two reactors, but only by creating some of the most expensive electricity out there today. Storage and renewables are cheaper, faster to deploy, and work really really really well in Texas and Arizona. Despite nearly free natural gas in Texas due its state as a by-product of oil extraction, most of the new electricity grid assets in Texas are wind, storage, and solar, and that's independent third party investors making those choice in the grid to make money, as Texas has perhaps the "freest" electricity market in the United States when it comes to who is allowed to build grid assets and make money off them. If the far north places have hydro that's already built and not being used, that makes sense for data centers. But new nuclear is not a serious technology, it exists mostly based on vibes.
- SoftTalker 17d agoThis is Finland. A third of the country is above the Arctic circle. In the winter the sun barely gets above the horizon. Nuclear makes a lot of sense there.
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- epistasis 16d ago
- bawolff 17d agoTraditionally you cared alot about internet connectivity and latency to your customer base. I imagine Texas comes out a lot better on that front. That probably matters a lot less for AI.
- dyauspitr 17d agoIf done correctly there’s a lot of free solar energy in sunny states.