These problems feel like they should be solveable. Communities should set strict noise limits and fine the heck out of data centers for exceeding them. Data centers should be required to provide their own power, like this datacenter [1] in Ireland (and ideally a large portion of it should be renewable). They should also be required to minimize water usage, like this Microsoft design that uses closed-loop cooling [2].

It will increase costs, but so be it. If you're going to build these things, then do it right.

A bigger problem, however, is that this requires functional government working in the interests of its residents.

[1] https://www.computeforecast.com/news/pure-dc-avk-europe-data...

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/12...

▲

analog31 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My dad was on his city's environmental control board. He learned that noise is actually quite hard to regulate. And every locality has to figure out their own unique noise ordinance. It should be solveable, but it might be realistically hard to solve.

	▲	lofaszvanitt 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What is hard to regulate? You point a directional mike towards the data center and towards the plains where sheeps roam. Compare, send the cheques and nuke them.

▲

protocolture 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Data centers should be required to provide their own power, like this datacenter [1] in Ireland

Data Centers should buy power at whatever the going rate of electricity is.

It is advantageous for some data centers to build their own power, but its not the norm nor should any industry be required to.

Whats next Aluminium smelting? Oil production? Big box retail?

Just because an industry that uses power has become the enemy of the week doesnt exclude them from market access. That should be obvious.

>A bigger problem, however, is that this requires functional government working in the interests of its residents.

It requires governments reacting to random populist impulses that don't fundamentally aid the community to ban random industries from the grid. Why not pressure the government to react to power price increases with additional supply like anyone who spends 20 seconds considering this issue would come up with?

▲

freetime2 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> Whats next Aluminium smelting? Oil production? Big box retail?

Yes I would say any large construction project that carries a risk of negatively impacting its community should be required to mitigate those issues in order to gain approval. Otherwise you are just passing on those negative "externalities" to someone else.

▲

protocolture 4 hours ago | parent [-]

>Yes I would say any large construction project that carries a risk of negatively impacting its community should be required to mitigate those issues in order to gain approval. Otherwise you are just passing on those negative "externalities" to someone else.

Common utilities are common to everyone. Signing a contract for supply of power is what they should be doing.

The only "negative externality" is that extra supply might, in whatever jurisdiction this is, not be brought online as demand increases. That's a feature of however your polity has designed their power market. The "negative externality" was brought into existence when that system was designed. The same effects occur regardless of who purchases the power, including residences.

Not to mention that, it literally benefits you to have this generation on grid, instead of running privately where only the datacentre can access it. Growing the common utility is better than demanding the monster of the week goes off and sources their own generation.

Dress it up in whatever language you want but this is just populism, trying to punish whatever the media has made you angry at today.

▲

freetime2 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Dress it up in whatever language you want but this is just populism, trying to punish whatever the media has made you angry at today.

No - it's a real problem:

> While hyperscale data centers can be built within 18 to 24 months, high-voltage transmission upgrades often require 7 to 10 years to plan, approve, and construct. As such, data centers are depleting available grid capacity faster than it can be physically replaced. As new generation sources can spend 4 to 5 years in interconnection queues before coming online, shrinking reserve margins (or the quantity of power that operators use to absorb system shocks and maintain reliability) cannot be replenished fast enough to meet demand. As reserve margins shrink, the grid becomes increasingly vulnerable to shortages and instability. [1]

Data centers place vastly different demands on a grid than residences, and it's a bit silly to suggest that they should be treated the same by utilities:

> For decades, the U.S. electricity system experienced gradual, diversified, and relatively predictable demand growth. This environment influenced how grid forecasting methods, reliability standards, and cost-allocation mechanisms were designed. However, data centers are now entering the electricity system faster and at a larger scale than planning, regulatory, and market-based institutions can manage.

To be clear I'm not saying that data centers must be off grid. Just that they should not be permitted to destabilize energy markets where they are built. To this end, Texas and Viginia are passing laws that require large-load customers to fund the increased generation and transmission costs:

> To manage price increases and allocative risk, Dominion proposed the GS-5 “High Load” tariff, which would apply to customers with at least 25 MW of demand. Under the tariff, large customers would pay a greater share of the generation, transmission, and distribution investments needed to serve large loads (such as data centers). Although large customers already pay for some on-site connection facilities, the proposed GS-5 tariff would go a step further. For example, if Dominion must build a dedicated substation or high-voltage line to serve a GS-5 campus, the infrastructure would be treated as customer-specific, and their costs recovered from the high-load customer instead of through general rates.

This is a reasonable approach to me. Although in some cases it might actually be quicker and cheaper for data centers to just handle their own power generation (as was the case with that data center in Ireland) separate from the grid.

[1] https://www.belfercenter.org/research-analysis/data-centers-...

	▲	protocolture 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>Texas Texas makes some sense because they are already disconnected. They cant reach interstate to make up supply. But no, legally speaking, a business should be able to connect to a common utility. There's nothing impressive about one large scale business over another. If they want to tip in some cash or make some kind of deal fantastic. But mandatory? No sense making carve outs for datacenters.

▲

ryukoposting 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

should is carrying the weight of the universe here.