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Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

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Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#261

Post by dawnerd »

DrewADesign wrote: post #120
beastman82 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing the population of Lewiston would welcome an employer of 30 jobs

So maybe someone can open a new sandwich shop and accomplish the same thing without screwing everybody else in the process. Not only that, Lewiston probably doesn’t have a glut of data center talent seeking employment —I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that not a single person living in Lewiston when a project like that was approved would be employed there.

A sandwich shop would also be infinitely more useful to the population.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#262

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

tadfisher wrote: post #141
ch4s3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI are much more energy-hungry than car manufacturing This is not even remotely true[1]. Large auto plants use on the order of 200–250 megawatts of power, which is either on par with a data center or slightly more than a data center depending on the size and how cooling is handled. [1] https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/tools/Industr...

New AI data center builds are being specified in gigawatts, my friend.

Yup. Here's slides from last year's HotChips on where AI racks are going: https://hc2025.hotchips.org/assets/program/tutorials/HC2025....

The racks rolling out now are in the 100s of KW each, targeting 1 MW per rack as the rough limit for using 400v DC.

The next iteration is go up to 800v DC, riding the coattails of power management components from the EV industry.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#263

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #255
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, for decades, electricity consumption has been mostly flat. There has not been a need to massively ramp up new generation or distribution. It is only in the last few years that such mega consumers have come online that is requiring new development at a frantic pace.

Not true. Electric vehicles have been threatening to collapse residential grids for quite a few years now. The US hasn't been making the necessary infrastructure investments for a long time. See PG&E for example.

For something the size of the electrical grid, you can find regional variations, but the national trend is quite clear. One report from a quick search[0]

  Consumption Growth Acceleration: After 14 years of near-stagnant growth (0.1% annually from 2008-2021), US electricity consumption surged 3.0% in 2024, driven by data centers, electric vehicles, and economic recovery, signaling a new era of demand growth.
[0] https://solartechonline.com/blog/how-much-electricity-does-u...

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#264

Post by butvacuum »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #170
butvacuum wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrifically pessimistic numbers for PV (winter in maine with conversion efficencies half what they are now)... comes out to about a 50x50 mile square of panels to generate the entire USA's power demand from the most recent DOE numbers. Ignore that we can have wind, solar, and crops* in the same area. Turns out, btw, crops don't like high noon beating down on them. As a result we can reduce water usage and get nearly…

That isn't the whole story. At least some of these new datacenters are gigawatt class. That's multiple sq km of solar. Water usage is also an issue. A continuous 1 gigawatt is enough to boil off 1.3 million liters per hour which over 24 hours equates to very roughly 90k residential users. If it isn't boiled but is instead returned lukewarm it will require many times that amount due to how large the heat of vaporizati…

did you move the goal post, or erect a new one? either way- residential use is penny ante in terms of water usage. So much so that comparing data center use to residential use without including industrial, commercial, and irrigation can only be in bad faith.

Particularly since usage reports typically present all the numbers in the same chart or grid.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#265

Post by jeffbee »

hatthew wrote: post #233
jph00 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"already substantially completed" isn't accurate. $450m of the eventual $1.65b cost had been spent at that point - so less than half.

I'd call that substantial

Indeed, considering the much of the cost in the end consists of carrying costs, litigation, and year-of-expenditure overruns that were caused by the delay.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#266

Post by harimau777 »

bdangubic wrote: post #245
Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sure have a right to enact policies that keep them economically & demographically irrelevant. https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/638FA4CD35438/media%2FF5jNt...

Data Centers would have made them sooooooo rich, very silly policies indeed, they’d be swimming in money

I can't tell if this is sarcasm? On the chance that it isn't, how would that make them rich? The profit from the data centers goes to the owner not to the people in the community or rest of the state.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#267

Post by fc417fc802 »

mediaman wrote: post #150
bigfatkitten wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a data centre brings absolutely no economic benefit whatsoever to its local community, unlike something like an auto plant that creates entirely new supporting industries to support it and its employees.

Loudoun County in Virginia generates $1 billion in property tax revenues from data centers. It funds half of all of their expenditures. Can you imagine having half of your total municipal government budget being paid for by data centers? Their citizens pay much lower property tax rates, and get much better schooling and police. Henrico County (also VA) took $60 million in unexpected new revenues from data centers and…

> that they consume a lot of water based on a discredited book with elementary math errors.

How exactly do you think they dissipate the heat of a continuous 100 MW or 1 GW power draw? I have no idea what book you're referring to but you can do the math yourself it's quite straightforward.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#268

Post by butvacuum »

donmcronald wrote: post #132
swarnie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the additional space needed to power a scaled DC with solar. I think the number of people opposing the construction would increase when they release its half the county. But what's an extra 500 acres between friends.

> I think the number of people opposing the construction would increase when they release its half the county. What's the math on that? It's interesting to see the US mandate ethanol production the way they do, which could be argued to be a farm subsidy, and then balk at the land needed for solar installations.

For arguments made in good faith- I think it's humanity's inability to comprehend scale. We can't get the volume of a glass of water right if we change it from tall to wide. Why would we think that terrawatts worth of PV would be a square shorter on a side than most people's daily commute?

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#269

Post by bryanlarsen »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #194
bryanlarsen wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maine obviously wouldn't have a problem with that, this law indicates they want them somewhere other than Maine. Environmental regulations that are as good as a ban seem far preferable to an outright ban, IMO. There's a large segment of the population that see outright bans as oppressive but support environmental regulations.

>Environmental regulations that are as good as a ban seem far preferable to an outright ban, IMO. There's a large segment of the population that see outright bans as oppressive but support environmental regulations. So basically steal legitimacy from real environmentalists by applying their label to something that's not really motivated by environmentalism but can be construed that way? "They don't actually want what…

Environmentalists are going to get blamed for the data center ban in Maine either way.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#270

Post by fc417fc802 »

tjohns wrote: post #182
xphos wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad dichotomy they aren't saying no to data centers to spite them. They are saying no because that data centers are a major public drain and net negative on public resources. Often they don't pay high taxes nor do they employ large numbers of people. Most of the money made by leeching of public power infrastructure and cheap electricity and export the profits to somewhere else. They are building and selling a non tan…

> Often they don't pay high taxes nor do they employ large numbers of people... They are building and selling a non tangible good i.e where do you tax it? You could easily charge a property tax (could even have a higher rate for data centers, specifically), or an excise tax on number of servers, or a tax on excess energy/water consumption. There's lots of options here, if that's what you're worried about. > Their is…

> an excise tax on number of servers

We need to go full Oracle and charge an excise tax per logical CPU core. For GPUs we can count SIMT lanes.

More seriously they should be taxed per watt, likely in an asymptotic manner because most of the externalities don't scale linearly. Any additional infrastructure requirements should be directly rolled into their electric and water bills, which is to say that they should receive a very unfavorable rate.

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