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mukbangpervert a day ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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ijk a day ago | parent | next [-]

The portable gas turbine is a somewhat separate issue, in that it's highly illegal but if you have more money than god you can just pay off the fines and the judges.

It's relatively easy to avoid being that egregious about it if you're a little bit patient on construction permits and power contracts.

NIMBY opposition to datacenter construction is orthogonal to that, except insofar as in both cases the construction will gravitate toward places that won't or can't object to the construction.

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seanmcdirmid a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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consensus1 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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annzabelle a day ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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mukbangpervert a day ago | parent [-]

A few things you might want to consider:

1) your example pays very substantial tax. (property taxes, plus, recently, tax on electricity use)

2) your example primarily used undesirable land.

3) your example grew slowly, allowing the power company to add capacity without a big challenge matching demand.

4) your example is in a heavily connected part of the grid, so it didn't need all of that added power generation to be local.

All of these factors led to datacenters being viewed favorably by Loudon County for most of this century.... but many (and sometimes all) of those factors aren't there for other projects. For example, there are a lot of projects where the datacenter is not paying any property tax or sales/use tax at all.

Heck, even in Loudon County, they're changing regulations to pump the brakes because the hyperscale datacenters are growing electric demand a bit too quickly for them to manage without adding a little friction.

Your anecdote about "it was good in this one county, from 1995 through 2025" cannot be reasonably extended to believe that all of these projects have similar tradeoffs.

(And I'm not even getting into the reality that "this datacenter will let me use AOL" will, of course, be viewed differently than "this datacenter will help my employer remove my job.")

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phil21 a day ago | parent [-]

The only reason Loudon county became datacenter alley is due to where the transatlantic cables landed. And Washington DC being next door.

It’s basically the OG networking effect. You put equipment there because everyone else had equipment there.

The rest just grew with it. It had nothing to do with power infrastructure. If anything, datacenters created the power infrastructure in the area.

Agreed on the tax abatement stuff. Those should be outright illegal regardless of industry.

	▲	mukbangpervert a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I agree that datacenters showed up because a ton of fibre was already there. I was talking about reasons that the general public of Loudon County has had a positive view toward datacenters -- not why datacenters chose the county (that's a different list entirely). Notably, that the datacenters showed up in a way that offered almost no material downsides to the locals... and that this differs markedly from what many towns face today.
	▲	annzabelle a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's actually because of DARPANET/ARPANET and other early computer research that was military or intelligence funded. It led to a concentration of networking in the region that led to MAE-East and it's all spiraled from there. The transatlantic cables were an aftereffect of everything else. I'm pretty sure they actually come ashore in Virginia Beach and New Jersey, both a solid 4 hour drive away.

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lostlogin a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This might be true in the US (which is obviously what the article is about) but it isn’t everywhere. Data centre impact is a concern here in New Zealand and we have a poor track record of handling the impact of large users of electricity. Case in point - the aluminium smelter that has manipulated the entire country power prices (and various other things) via threats.

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tzs a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Which market do you mean when talking about "market prices"?

I'm pretty sure the utility where I am has been able to get rate increases approved partly based on rising prices they have to pay to buy power on the wholesale market when they do not have enough capacity of their own to cover all their customers.

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annzabelle a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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galaxyLogic a day ago | parent [-]

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 a day ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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dozerly 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Spoken like someone that will not have a data center built near them at their expense in the near future

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phil21 a day ago | parent [-]

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 a day ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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lokar a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 a day ago \| parent [-]
		> The noise issue is not irrational. It’s quite the thing to say it’s irrational whilst acknowledging you are insensitive to sounds.

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robocat a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> minority of people ultra sensitive to noise

misophonia can be severely disabling. Good overview: 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).

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happytoexplain a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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").

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austin-cheney a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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phil21 a day ago | parent [-]

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!

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austin-cheney a day ago | parent [-]

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?

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phil21 a day ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	austin-cheney a day ago \| parent [-]
		I cannot speak for why everyone in the US buys solar. I can only speak for my local community. If you want to find locations of grid instability focus on growth, both residential and industrial, that is radically out of scale compared to larger geographic averages. Otherwise, it seems like you are measuring using the wrong trends. What’s crazy is that the grid instability was there before the explosion of data centers and the primary revenue generator of the much larger geographic region is energy transport/production.

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GlacierFox a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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