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Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

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Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#131

Post by jeffbee »

RajT88 wrote: post #124
trollbridge wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us would like to keep our “infinite” water resources which actually aren’t infinite. I live beneath two transmission lines (overlapping, I guess, but not intersecting) and would prefer no data centre built here. Why? Because it will provide me no benefit whatsoever, reduce my property value, and worsen my quality of life due to things like light pollution and noise. If data centre operators would fix these th…

I'm seeing a lot of pushback against data centers in my town, building where there is currently cornfields. I would disagree that it provides no benefit whatsoever. I ran the numbers on the proposed campuses, and at half price for industrial property taxes, it's at full build-out going to bring a billion dollars a year to the city. The property taxes I pay, which 73% of go to the local school district is about 108 mi…

Given the predicted rise of Lake Michigan, and the predicted future volatility of its level, I would suggest that the cities and states of the region be building as many megascale waterworks as they can, and the energy systems to operate them. If they can get that money from data center builders, all the better.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#132

Post by Symbiote »

zinekeller wrote: post #112
PunchyHamster wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

block was enabled by site owner, not cloudflare. If they used something else they'd just blanked block ASN IP blocks

And as stated by others, it's about not complying with GDPR et al. Heck, this is not even Cloudflare, it's AWS Cloudfront!

The site works fine from the EU.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#133

Post by LtWorf »

nixgeek wrote: post #51
thewebguyd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer went through a similar process, not for a data center but for a large recycling yard/center. We had to buy the land first, and it was basically unproductive for 2.5 years of mostly waiting for permits, and it was already zoned industrial so no zoning changes were needed. The whole project was several million in expenses before even making a dollar. We aren't huge either, the permitting was not supposed to…

It’s unusual to buy the land and take a gamble on its utility, at least whenever datacenter construction is involved. Purchasing parties are risk averse to this exact scenario and work hard to craft contracts that reduce risk. Often the choices are — 1. Buy land at $/acre that reflects very little premium, based on a short feasibility study, but without any ultimate contingency that permitting will occur. This is you…

If you are microsoft, you know you will get the permit.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#134

Post by redanddead »

LtWorf wrote: post #133
nixgeek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s unusual to buy the land and take a gamble on its utility, at least whenever datacenter construction is involved. Purchasing parties are risk averse to this exact scenario and work hard to craft contracts that reduce risk. Often the choices are — 1. Buy land at $/acre that reflects very little premium, based on a short feasibility study, but without any ultimate contingency that permitting will occur. This is you…

If you are microsoft, you know you will get the permit.

No you don’t. The overall risk is baked into the strategy, but any individual plan is always a toss up, and they have insurance policies for if one or all fail

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#135

Post by mindslight »

jeffbee wrote: post #96
trollbridge wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a new data centre, your electric coop rates can go up with no benefit to you whatsoever.

In America electric rates are increasing due to 20 years of stagnation and failure to invest in transmission, and new data centers are on average associated with lower, not higher retail electric rates. This is because large consumers drive down marginal prices. In your country things may be proceeding differently, but that's the story here.

This doesn't really hold when we're talking about discrete pieces of infrastructure that may need to be built. If the current transmission infrastructure is fine for the current users, and then a new large user comes along that necessitates new infrastructure, that is a huge new cost that simply that simply didn't exist without that large user.

I believe in many areas this is the kind of infrastructure investment that regulated utilities can easily pass onto existing rate payers, which is where the problem/narrative comes from in the first place. So your theory doesn't match the actual results people are complaining about.

Same thing when datacenters take power generation into their own hands and build new gas turbines rather than solar/batteries or paying to expedite grid construction. And I'm willing to believe these problems happen in a minority of cases, but the problem is that they seemingly do happen and existing residents are left without recourse.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#136

Post by pocksuppet »

dylan604 wrote: post #34
marticode wrote: post #2

Well my IP (regular plain residential Asian ISP) is blocked on this site. Zealous Cloudflare-blocking is breaking the web. (also thanks for the useful message telling me to "contact the website owner... while blocking me from the website where the contact info should be)

I'm not defending Cloudflare, but what is a better solution? If small websites can just be DDOS'd out of existence because some group thinks it'll be funny, what protections do they have? It takes too much equipment and know-how to stop an attack for people to be able to survive online. The next thing you'll hear about is a monthly service fee to the hackers as a protection racket just like the mob.

Just host the site. Are you expecting to get DDoS'd? Why? And what will be the consequences if you are?

Someone said it's like protecting yourself from stabbings by banning kitchen knives, but it's more like protecting yourself from stabbings by wearing thick rubber armor at all times, that also happens to be filled with spy cameras somebody else owns. It's a bit of an overreaction to a very rare threat, don't you think?

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#137

Post by gottorf »

cyberax wrote: post #110
nixgeek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utah’s 40,000 acre datacenter proves it’s not absolutely at the upper end. https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/933687/u... Most hyperscalers now prefer to build larger sites as “campuses” which may consist of many buildings each consuming 40-100MW, and then yes each building needs most of what you mentioned, so it adds up. A few sites are now also contemplating BTM or ‘behind the meter’ power generati…

The density of modern racks makes me wonder why they would want so much space. There's just no way to power all of that. Storage? Even that is now ultra-compact.

They're called hyperscalers for a reason.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#138

Post by throwaway2037 »

theflyinghorse wrote: post #79
marticode wrote: post #2

Well my IP (regular plain residential Asian ISP) is blocked on this site. Zealous Cloudflare-blocking is breaking the web. (also thanks for the useful message telling me to "contact the website owner... while blocking me from the website where the contact info should be)

I don't understand why cloudflare is loved by tech people. They ARE breaking the web.

Real question: What is the alternative to prevent DDoS? The killer app is that their DDoS prevention is free for small sites.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#139

Post by gottorf »

CPLX wrote: post #117
tptacek wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caledonia is an exurb of Milwaukee, so it's pretty sparse and spread out. There isn't that much demand for land on the outskirts of Milwaukee and most of the demand out there is industrial. Compared to the other industrial uses you'd get, data centers are almost certainly preferable.

> Compared to the other industrial uses you'd get, data centers are almost certainly preferable. Why? The ratio of jobs and taxes to local resources tied up has to be one of the worst possible trade-offs of any industrial use that you can envision. That is precisely why data centers are proving to be profoundly unpopular. Compare and contrast to something like a Boeing assembly plant with thousands of high-paid skill…

> The ratio of jobs and taxes to local resources tied up has to be one of the worst possible trade-offs of any industrial use that you can envision

Why? There aren't much "local resources tied up" since it's land that isn't that valuable for the most part. DCs, once built, don't emit fumes or loud noises, or make traffic worse like other industrial land use might. They just sit there quietly and generate tax revenue for the locality.

Sure, there aren't many ongoing jobs at an operating DC. But I can't see why it's one of the worst possible industrial uses, from the point of view of the residents around one.

> data centers are proving to be profoundly unpopular

From what I can tell, this is just from a combination of AI being unpopular plus opportunistic fearmongering on the part of politicians.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#140

Post by burnte »

arjie wrote: post #4

What is the actual procedure through which this happens? You buy the land and then are granted permission on a discretionary basis? It seems to me that if you were a small business this becomes much harder to participate in because you need to acquire and hold the unproductive asset. This would mean that land use tends towards that which large firms (which can sustain the costs easily by self-financing) find useful.

SMaller business would find land already zoned for what they want. That makes it much less of a fight. These large companies find the land they want, then fight governments to allow the code and zoning changes to allow them to do what they want. It's a backwards process, but they think it's fine because they can afford it, and don't stop to realize that if they stopped letting execs make the decisions of where it goes, then a facility professional can find better land that they could get up and operational much faster.

I've seen it a decent number of times in my life. The exec gets their hart set on a specific building or parcel, but literally no one else in the entire project cares because they know it doesn't matter. Then the site desired won't work, and half the time the project fails.

I was at one company years ago, the execs were bound and determined the company was going to move the HQ from one building to another a handful of miles away. They saw the floors we were to rent, were completely set on that, and then proceeded to act like the deal was done. They had the credentialing department put in a change of address to MEDICARE before we had even signed the lease! We were 6 weeks from the move day when FINALLY there was a blow up in a meeting where people told the CEO and COO they were delusional and that we had to cancel the plan because we STILL DID NOT HAVE A SIGNED LEASE. There had been major negotiating hurdles between facilities and the building owner, but the C suite acted like none of it was happening for months. They spent 6 figures prepping for a move that in the end never happened. Building owner went bankrupt, we didn't move and instead just rented another suite in our own building.

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