51–60 of 66 posts
All around it looks like sparsely built countryside. I wonder what was the risk analysis that was done for the data centers. I guess the better places without the noise have people living there so datacenters went to the low value land.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And very few people work there relative to the impact. Sure nobody liked living near factories in ye olden days, but they did like the employment opportunities. You can see how few work there when you compare the size of the data centre and the size of the car park.
I don't think that the data centers are having a negative economic impact on Louden County residents. It's the richest country in the US with a median household income of $156,821. They also get really low property tax rates because the data centers are paying a lot of taxes compared to their costs. If there were lots more people working there, the county would need to spend a lot more money on roads and such. Instea…
Indeed, and it is not a place for average people to live. Loudon county is dominated by the rich and the legacy of the beltway bandits. It's a sad place centered around commuting to Washington D.C. or serving those who do.
The part about the person who saw they're building a new one in her neighborhood would make for a great Onion article. "'I never thought they'd build a 200th data center,' says woman who lives in county with 199 data centers."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> generators Ahem. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...
Why don't they use Tesla solar panels and batteries?
And you'd need an insane amount of solar panels to actually recharge those batteries in any kind of reasonable time too, so you expose yourself to a massive risk if you had two out of power events within say 12 hours. So you'd probably build all of those batteries and solar panels but you'd still need to have emergency generators ready to go anyway.
Article makes a huge deal about humming/buzzing but there’s no way that’s a real thing right? What would be the reason it would go beyond like any HVAC-ish thing on a large building? Lost me at the first sentence :(
I have never visited datacenters that large, but transformer substations can have an audible hum to them. Tests of diesel generators can also produce a bit of noise. I'm fairly surprised that there aren't zoning laws that prevents datacenters from being built where people live. When we built a fairly small datacenter we had to place it in an industrial area with no housing and no offices.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And very few people work there relative to the impact. Sure nobody liked living near factories in ye olden days, but they did like the employment opportunities. You can see how few work there when you compare the size of the data centre and the size of the car park.
There's a lot of work building them, not permanent of course.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once visited a fairly large DC in the outskirts of paris (Scaleway DC5) and it was basically dead silent outside. I guess these large DCs are just build with absolutely no concern for noise pollution?
Scaleway DC5 is large by French standards, rather small by US hyperscaler standards. But the main reason is DC5 does not use classic cooling, thus does not have huge dry coolers outside, which definitely helps for noise (it's adiabatic cooling). Another fact is just the sheer power density of those problematic north virginia datacenters. I'd bet us-east-1 is not an issue (old building and lower power density), but th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And very few people work there relative to the impact. Sure nobody liked living near factories in ye olden days, but they did like the employment opportunities. You can see how few work there when you compare the size of the data centre and the size of the car park.
I don't think that the data centers are having a negative economic impact on Louden County residents. It's the richest country in the US with a median household income of $156,821. They also get really low property tax rates because the data centers are paying a lot of taxes compared to their costs. If there were lots more people working there, the county would need to spend a lot more money on roads and such. Instea…
Also the county west of loudoun (Clarke), which has no data centers, has even lower taxes than loudoun. If you compare tax rate in loudoun in 2006 versus 2025 it's 1 percentage point lower now.
It's sad seeing people impacted by these data centers considering how little voice they have. I don't think anyone wants to live near a data center unless they actually worked there.
Did you read the article? It's about Loudoun County, the wealthiest county in the US. The people "affected" both are the ones making the decision about where to put the data centers and the ones profiting off them. Don't lose sleep. Also, those same people have the most ability to live wherever they want, and can leave. This isn't mountaintop removal in coal country. This is wealthy DC lobbyists being a little annoye…
We mostly don't like them, we mostly do feel disenfranchised, and people are trying to mobilize more political awareness of which politicians are cozying up to data-centers.
One of the biggest complaints isn't the data-centers themselves, but that they use so much electricity that these heinously ugly power-lines have to get put up in what is one of the most beautiful nature areas of the country (i.e. "blue ridge mountains / Shennandoah river / country roads").
> Also, those same people have the most ability to live wherever they want, and can leave.
That's a ludicrous suggestion. The tax alone on selling your house is at a minimum 10%, aside from every other cost, that's basically a 6 figure loss plus all your close family and friends.
> This is wealthy DC lobbyists being a little annoyed about a hum.
No. It's mostly the residents who predate the datacenters who are the most opposed. Western Loudoun was actually mostly farmland one generation ago, and actually had a bit of hippie / homeschooler energy.
---
Instead datacenters should be required by law to build underground with noise limits, and required by law to not increase electricity prices and not drain the grid around them. If they can't be profitable without negative externalities then they aren't worth having.