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Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

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Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#441

Post by mediaman »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #348
mediaman wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is why communities want to block the data centers. Just make them pay! Your electricity price shouldn't go up because of them. So just make a rate card for data centers that ensures the burden doesn't fall on residents. That's what Oregon started doing, and residents' electricity prices actually started falling, because the fixed costs of energy production were being spread across more kilowat…

> I've also seen counties offer tax incentives. Why? Just have them pay property tax. This seems naive. You are missing the point. If you don't offer tax incentives, then you don't get data centers (or other important industrial facilities). The internal United States market competition to attract these projects is intense . If you look at when a major foreign auto manuf wants to build a new plant in the US, there is…

Consider that the stance now is banning data centers. That's the context of the discussion.

The county's other option is to simply price data centers. Yes, that means they might not win the data center. If the data center can get better terms elsewhere, they do that. If the town doesn't want to concede on price, then fine.

People seem to be mad that data centers show up with less perceived value to the community than they want, so why would they care if the data center builds elsewhere because they don't agree to their price? The position strictly Pareto dominates the ban stance: at worst, they get no data center (same as ban), at best, they get a bunch of tax money.

Please educate me on how I'm "missing the point" because of how "naive" I am!

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#442

Post by wat10000 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #391
wat10000 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment sure makes it sound like you think there's a problem with the new scale of things. And I'm not saying that's incorrect, just that it needs to be backed up with something more than "it's way bigger than it was." Completely agreed that the "this existed before" argument is tiring. But so is the "it's a lot bigger now" argument. Neither one actually says anything interesting. They're both statements of opin…

“It’s a lot bigger now” just means we have to deal with realities of scale, that’s a true statement so I’m not sure why that’s different from my scale argument. The whole point is “yes these 2 things are the same, except scale, which can make it very different.” 1 bee sting is one thing, 1000 is another. 1 piece of candy is one thing, 1000 is another. You are assigning additional value to my comments - I get it but I…

My main point is that this goes both ways: there are those who act as if scale is not a part of the conversation, and those who act as if scale is the only part of the conversation, and neither one is sensible.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#443

Post by tclancy »

bryan0 wrote: post #260
tclancy wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been reading that same line for 15-20 years now.

Yeah, maybe I'm just getting older. Not sure how you would measure it, but maybe it would be % of posts with "nuanced" discussions. It feels like HN was gone way downhill in this regard, but who knows.

Or perhaps your tastes have improved!

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#444

Post by AndrewKemendo »

mediaman wrote: post #432
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the best longitudinal study from the WHO There is no safe level of alcohol consumption (1). Every molecule of alcohol is measurably bad for you physically People want to conflate their personal desires and perceived social benefits with health benefits because mental health and physical health have overlaps However they need to be separate to actually make a claim about alcohol as there are millions of p…

That's not a study from the WHO, it's a public statement they published in Lancet. It's an opinion piece. Moreover, the WHO never changed their stance when later big studies showed that the "lowest risk" level is not actually at zero drinks. The timeline was this: - In 2018, a study was published in the Lancet that was the Global Burden of Disease analysis. They claimed the modeled minimum risk exposure was zero drin…

> Several other studies have shown either no discernible risk change between zero and 1 drink per day, or lowest possible risk at 1 drink per day.

So in the end results are in all practical implementation of this science is exactly the same: Even one drink of alcohol is the threshold

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#445

Post by adamsb6 »

quickthrowman wrote: post #415
adamsb6 wrote: post #267

Something smells wrong. You could dump a gigawatt into resistive heating and not see such temperature rises so far away.

I’m confused. Rejecting one GW of heat to the building exterior with heat exchangers is going to heat up the area around the heat exchangers. If you had a hypothetical 1 GW generator and used a hypothetical 1 GW loadbank with 1 GW of resistive heating and a fan that was outdoors, the air temperature would rise.

The air temperature would rise near the heat source, and that hot air would rise in a plume and disperse, not seep out laterally.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#447

Post by Tanoc »

dwoldrich wrote: post #35

I cannot figure out if this data center panic is legit or trumped up. There are legitimate nation-state and political entities that would love to create pressure for degrowth in this area. And, pollution and natural resources are a concern, yes, fine, sure. NIMBY happens, I get it ... *BUT*, we've been building huge data centers for decades and they are minuscule compared to the size of the earth. My skeptic meter ma…

We built maybe two of the older less dense ones every year in most states, and that was driven by SaaS and cloud storage. The expected rate these AI datacenters would be built at if we just let these people go unopposed would be one every single week for the next four years. Something the size of a Wal-Mart Supercenter that uses the equivalent electricity of fifty to sixty four person households and depending on if it's open or closed loop cooled could use the equivalent of thirty households' worth of water.

That doesn't sound like a panic, that sounds like people wanting some consideration and moderation of infrastructure that's extremely disruptive and tied to a technology that's causing more damage than it's helping currently.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#448

Post by MC995 »

MengerSponge wrote: post #342

Can we also talk about the sheer madness of using single-cycle natural gas turbines to power these things? It's tragic.

They don't though. At least not all, and not most of the newer ones.

All of the DC designs I've worked on the last few years have all included heat absorption chillers driven by engine exhaust (for reciprocating engine power plants) and HRSGs with steam driven chillers for the turbine power plants.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#449

Post by MengerSponge »

MC995 wrote: post #448
MengerSponge wrote: post #342

Can we also talk about the sheer madness of using single-cycle natural gas turbines to power these things? It's tragic.

They don't though. At least not all, and not most of the newer ones. All of the DC designs I've worked on the last few years have all included heat absorption chillers driven by engine exhaust (for reciprocating engine power plants) and HRSGs with steam driven chillers for the turbine power plants.

I'd love to be wrong, but I fear I'm not: https://www.wired.com/story/real-reason-data-center-gas-powe...

It's absurd, cruel, and criminal that any hyperscalers are using fossil fuels of any kind, much less simple cycle turbines.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#450

Post by rpdillon »

grubbusThewiz wrote: post #429
rpdillon wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. I'm not sure where HN is hosted, but I think it's a bare metal server in a colo, not a data center. The childish behavior is disagreeing with how datacenters are being deployed and reducing that to "more is bad", and then stretching the position to "data centers bad". I'm begging the collective here to consider what they are really asking for, because our society, from the government down, is built on the c…

Your perception is its built on cloud. How much if that is true and how much of it is carefully constructed propaganda? Implanted and reinforced beliefs to make workers hustle to ensure the server fields produce enough crop this quarter. Most people on the planet are not tech people. Their world is not built on cloud at all but ensuring there is sufficient food and stuff to satisfy their biological needs. It's asocia…

I think you're vastly under-estimating the extent to which power grids, water systems, and global supply chains and manufacturing rely heavily on datacenters.

The Trump administration pulled a bunch of ocean sensors, whose data was aggregated in the cloud, in an attempt to save money. Except, those sensors were not only providing research data on changes in ocean currents, but helping fisheries make predictions about yield. The administration backtracked because of this.

There is a similar story with weather forecasting, and farmers being able to manage their crops.

Let's not even get started on the economic impact worldwide of datacenters were not available to process stock and bond trades.

New technologies seem optional, but once society passes some tipping point in their adoption, they no longer are. AI isn't there yet, but cloud computing is.

I think I've given you far more than you're due in this conversation, so I'll stop here.

In short, I think you're being dismissive, particularly when you try to frame my position as "society is propped up by script kiddies". Seems like a deeply inaccurate way of summarizing my points.

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