Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

theconversation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 164 posts

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#101

Post by Gracana »

johndough wrote: post #36
bob1029 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be even more nuanced, the land is not typically taken entirely. The more typical solution is an easement with compensation for the land owner to cover the reduction in utility. Transmission lines are pretty harmless when considering things that could be built instead. Zero emissions, silent, no illumination, etc.

> Zero emissions, silent, no illumination, etc. Mostly silent. High voltage transmission lines may have a low-frequency hum. You have to stand directly under them to hear it though.

I was looking at buying a house with big transmission lines crossing over the property. It was a misty not-quite-raining day when I went to look at it, and you could hear the lines crackling and humming the whole time you were outside. I figured I’d have to give up ham radio if I moved there, ha.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#102

Post by dumah »

_trampeltier wrote: post #75
mschuster91 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency.

Latency for interaction with AI? For something the user use browsers and electron apps. A ping goes around the whole world before your pressed key is visible on the screen.

Increasing latency can also reduce TCP throughput ceiling, increase in-flight concurrency, and increase server memory consumption.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#103

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #19

This could work out. We need, for example, ultra-high-voltage DC lines from the US wind belt to areas with real loads. The US wind belt is roughly from the Texas panhandle north to Canada. Plenty of wind, no big power users. But nobody has been able to build lines west to California or east to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, where the loads are. This is held up by land acquisition, not technology. China has so…

[deleted]

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#104

Post by copper4eva »

Eufrat wrote: post #2

Are these AI-driven data centers actually getting built? I was reading about Kevin O’Leary’s initial proposal for his Utah data center and it’s just preposterous, it’s inconceivable anyone needs that much compute at any realistic demand level. The ask is so massively large that even the scaled down version is just absurd. We also have the Stargate UK data center that the Starmer government trumpeted before it was exp…

I happen to know some people who work for a company that helps build data centers. Business is booming for them, lots of projects all over the country (USA). So just to answer the straight up question of if they're actually getting built, yes they certainly are.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#106

Post by bigfishrunning »

thelastgallon wrote: post #89
mschuster91 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency.

Whats the relevance of fibre optic latency to electric lines?

Either the data center is in the wind belt and you run fiber to the people, or the data center is near the people and you run power to the source. Either way you have to do some kind of cable run, and that means land.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#107

Post by bigfishrunning »

johndough wrote: post #36
bob1029 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be even more nuanced, the land is not typically taken entirely. The more typical solution is an easement with compensation for the land owner to cover the reduction in utility. Transmission lines are pretty harmless when considering things that could be built instead. Zero emissions, silent, no illumination, etc.

> Zero emissions, silent, no illumination, etc. Mostly silent. High voltage transmission lines may have a low-frequency hum. You have to stand directly under them to hear it though.

There's a high-voltage line that crosses over a park (with soccer fields etc...) near me, and you can hear it crackling whenever you're there. I'm sure it's a noisy radio environment.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#108

Post by exe34 »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #106
thelastgallon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats the relevance of fibre optic latency to electric lines?

Either the data center is in the wind belt and you run fiber to the people, or the data center is near the people and you run power to the source. Either way you have to do some kind of cable run, and that means land.

fiber is a lot easier to run under houses than hvdc.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#109

Post by delecti »

bvcp wrote: post #60

tell me again why ai datacenters in space make no sense

Cosmic rays, launch costs, relative impossibility of maintenance, difficulty of heat dispersal, added latency, interconnect interference, no way to recycle when decommissioning.

Or we could build a power line.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#110

Post by bigfishrunning »

jaredklewis wrote: post #49
lenkite wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blank cheque on corpo infrastructure just means that billionaires win and everyone else loses. At that point, just paint "Peasant Slave" on your forehead if you don't have a multi-million lobbying group at the state and federal level. "All your base are belong to us" => Billionaires of USA When that happens rename the nation to Corporate States of America as well.

But what if I want to live in a country with a growing economy and improving infrastructure? Forbidding all development does hurt corporations and the wealthy, but just in the sense that it hurts everyone, including them. If we do want to soak the rich, can we do it in a progressive, targeted way (such as taxes) and not in a NIMBY way where we just say no one can build or improve anything?

There's a difference between "The state will seize your property" and "You may sell your property to the corporation at a rate you choose, and if you don't want to then they'll have to find some other land to use". In either case, development does happen, but the primary beneficiaries of the development (the owners of the data center) would have to pay the people who's land they're using (or taking!) instead of lobbying the government to just take it.

I think that unwitting land owners should not be subsidizing the AI grifters...

Post reply on HN