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A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

politico.com

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Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#81

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

mindslight wrote: post #79
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article details why it wasn't so basic here. Loudoun County allows datacenters to be built by right without a hearing, because they were understood to be (and IME still usually are) very low-impact on the neighbors. The gas turbines were approved as a temporary power source, but then the local power company Dominion said "temporary" would have to last for years longer than planned. Now they're changing the rules…

The fundamental problem is that adjusting the regulations for new operations still delivers no equitable relief for people around the site that was let through. An industrial operation shouldn't get an indefinite pass of grandfathered use for finding tricks in the current regulations. Rather the turbines should be shut down in short order (~weeks), and then owners can figure out how to proceed with the foreseeable co…

The article says that Michael Turner, the vice chair of the county's government, doesn't believe they were trying to find tricks or deceive anyone. That makes it a lot harder to justify shutting them down. And potentially quite expensive, if they or their users can argue the county is liable for the costs.

You mention properly incentivizing the grid operator, but this is also not so simple. As Dominion describes in their FAQ (https://www.dominionenergy.com/virginia/large-business-servi...), providing power to a large datacenter is itself a substantial construction project, requiring its own permits and specialized components. It's not just a matter of paying enough to get some guys working overtime.

Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#82

Post by progbits »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #43
PaulKeeble wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the ways corruption hides its intentions is lying to make it look like incompetence. It takes a very long time for the truth to come out and it rarely does but corruption depends on people buying the lies and assuming its just incompetence.

Incompetence should carry liability as well. If some politician signs his name to random documents without understanding what he's doing and causes harm to people, he should simply pay the price to make the other party whole, whatever damage was caused should be undone to the fullest possible extent and he should be removed from office for good measure because he's clearly too dumb to exercise it responsibly. That's…

You had me in the first half, the last paragraph is going way too far.

Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#83

Post by mindslight »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #81
mindslight wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem is that adjusting the regulations for new operations still delivers no equitable relief for people around the site that was let through. An industrial operation shouldn't get an indefinite pass of grandfathered use for finding tricks in the current regulations. Rather the turbines should be shut down in short order (~weeks), and then owners can figure out how to proceed with the foreseeable co…

The article says that Michael Turner, the vice chair of the county's government, doesn't believe they were trying to find tricks or deceive anyone. That makes it a lot harder to justify shutting them down. And potentially quite expensive, if they or their users can argue the county is liable for the costs. You mention properly incentivizing the grid operator, but this is also not so simple. As Dominion describes in t…

> doesn't believe they were trying to find tricks or deceive anyone

Talking about motivations would seem to be a smokescreen, a politician still trying to grease the wheels to allow the project to continue despite the harm to local residents. The point is that any engineer overseeing the deployment of turbines would have said "these things are loud" - it's an externality eminently foreseeable by the owner.

And yes, my point is that the theories of liability that would make the county liable for any of these costs need to be drastically curtailed. The responsibility for a datacenter owner trying to force their externalities onto existing land uses and failing should rest on the datacenter owner, not on the people whom they attempted to harm.

Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#84

Post by matheusmoreira »

progbits wrote: post #82
matheusmoreira wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incompetence should carry liability as well. If some politician signs his name to random documents without understanding what he's doing and causes harm to people, he should simply pay the price to make the other party whole, whatever damage was caused should be undone to the fullest possible extent and he should be removed from office for good measure because he's clearly too dumb to exercise it responsibly. That's…

You had me in the first half, the last paragraph is going way too far.

If anything it's not going far enough. Corruption should be considered high treason and lead to public executions.

As a common citizen, very few things in this world are more demoralizing than witnessing corrupt politicians get filthy rich while trading favors, embezzling money, creating loopholes for corporations to exploit while pretending to regulate them or whatever else it is that they do, there are so many scams it's impossible to enumerate them all. It breaks one's spirit to realize that it's the honest and the just who get punished on a daily basis while the corrupt get constantly rewarded. That is an incalculable crime against society and should absolutely be severely punished.

If they don't like it, they can just not be a politician. Nobody asked them to seek power, they fought to be there. Normal citizens get to go to jail, not them.

> But he that knew not and committed things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.

> For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required

> and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#85

Post by phil21 »

downrightmike wrote: post #74
bilekas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you mean, "allowed" to vote on it? The county officials are the decisionmakers, who should have allowed or not allowed them? Well I'm not sure how it works there but there are requests here made before building can start. Planning permission is usually first voted on by committee and then brought to the public in the area and public forums are where people get to ask questions such as "what's the expected n…

Bending over backwards and giving zero tax rates will sure make our area prosper! It has never worked before, but this time, maybe it will!!

Pretty sure Northern VA (datacenter alley) is doing pretty great?

Doubt they had to bend over backwards. This is one of dozens (hundreds now?) datacenters in the area.

The difference these days is that they now come with power plants in the parking lot. Otherwise they tend to be pretty quiet all things considered other than when backup generators are fired up during testing or power outages.

Cooling can be moderately loud, but the noise rapidly drops off with distance.

Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#86

Post by phil21 »

mindslight wrote: post #83
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says that Michael Turner, the vice chair of the county's government, doesn't believe they were trying to find tricks or deceive anyone. That makes it a lot harder to justify shutting them down. And potentially quite expensive, if they or their users can argue the county is liable for the costs. You mention properly incentivizing the grid operator, but this is also not so simple. As Dominion describes in t…

> doesn't believe they were trying to find tricks or deceive anyone Talking about motivations would seem to be a smokescreen, a politician still trying to grease the wheels to allow the project to continue despite the harm to local residents. The point is that any engineer overseeing the deployment of turbines would have said "these things are loud" - it's an externality eminently foreseeable by the owner. And yes, m…

Yes, we should definitely increase NIMBY regulation by retroactively changing the rules on industrial development. The US is doing such a great job at building such projects already.

No thanks. Instead lets fix our inability to build a thing in this country by reducing NIMBY regulation so things like power generation can be built where it makes sense, and we are allowed to do things like build long distance transmission lines again. Also start funding these societal-level projects like our grandparents and great grandparents did to invest in our futures.

No datacenter operator wants to deploy their own power plants. It's due to the inability for anyone to get anything done that is not directly under their control. You would be waiting decades for projects to happen otherwise, like many have. Utilities have abdicated their responsibility to build for the future, and regulators have let them. Just like anything infrastructure related in the country. You are now seeing the direct impacts of this, and they will continue to increase regardless of if the cause is AI datacenters or whatever other popular thing we want to argue about next.

Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#87

Post by phil21 »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #9
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean, "allowed" to vote on it? The county officials are the decisionmakers, who should have allowed or not allowed them? It also seems worth noting that these gas turbine generators are meant to be the solution to another big complaint people have about datacenters, that they might drive up local power prices if they plug into the grid. Like you and the people in the article, I'm personally very sensitive…

I mean, I'm fine with datacenters plugging into the grid, if they pay for it. I don't understand (and I mean feel free to explain it) this weird shit where a datacenter goes up and everybody's power bills start increasing. I have assumed that it's because the grid's facilities require upgrades to meet the new demand, but in the case of the "new demand" being "one structure consuming an assload of power" it feels incr…

It's due to lack of investment in the power grid on a generational timeline. We used up every bit of slack and extra capacity in the name of efficiency and not needing to spend the money on building stuff.

It's also nearly impossible to build large-scale things like long distance transmission lines - so even stuff like solar fields and wind farms are difficult to make pencil out these days. You are talking a decade or more to get anything big done, if you are lucky.

We ran out of parlour tricks like trying to game efficiency and curtail residential usage. We also ran out of industry to offshore. This was coming for us either way, just AI datacenter buildouts were unexpected and pulled demand forward some odd number of years.

I was always planning on building an off-grid power setup for exactly this reason - the writing was on the wall decades ago. It just came a bit sooner than I expected!

A large industrial scale power user that operates at roughly the same base power load 24x7 is an absolute dream customer for a grid operator. The fact we can't make the perfect customer profile pencil out without raising rates should be a giant huge red flashing warning sign with bells going off to everyone. Heck, these facilities can even typically participate in demand shedding programs on top of being ideal.

We've been living off the cheap power our grandparents invested in building for us. Time has come to pay the piper.

Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#88

Post by phil21 »

happytoexplain wrote: post #62
tren_hard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Not wanting a data center next to your home is now "pure selfish NIMBYism". This is how sick we are becoming. It's hideous that this is now how we treat people with homes in the US. Everything must get worse, and worse, and worse, and if you cry out against any single thing, you must be a selfish asshole. It makes me want to fucking cry, what's happening to my country.

> It makes me want to fucking cry, what's happening to my country.

Same. We used to be a country that could get things done. Stuff like power generation and transmission lines were built out well ahead of expected demand, with resiliency baked in. Negative impacts were there, but understood as part of the whole living in society thing. Reasonable minds came together and made the best choices possible at scale and mitigated negative externalities to individuals as much as possible. We understood spending a decade on impact studies and lawsuits helped no one.

We decided to protect the absurd, so we shall get the absurd as workarounds. Folks (collectively speaking) didn't want transmission lines running through their farmland or whatnot, so now we get absurd workarounds like standing up gas turbines in datacenter parking lots.

It's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, since this has become the only way to get anything done.

Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#89

Post by phil21 »

ratg13 wrote: post #73
renewiltord wrote: post #69

Haha this is because of the on site gas turbines because we’ve decided that any power infrastructure is evil. You gotta love the NDFA that is the market finding the gaps in law to reach utility. I live near a datacenter myself in San Francisco. No problems here.

Gas turbines emit an array of pollutants including nitrogen oxides, methane, carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, and formaldehyde that you should not be breathing. You might not feel it right away, but the closer you are to these things, the more your health is going to suffer over time.

The point OP was making is that due to off-site power generation like it should be - there are no gas turbines built co-located with the datacenter they live near. As such, a datacenter is roughly as obnoxious (likely less so due to less traffic) as an office building or warehouse. Until recently most folks living near such a facility likely had no idea.

It's when we decide building any power infrastructure anywhere is evil we get absurdities like standing up jet engines in datacenter parking lots as insane workarounds.

It's basically impossible to build anything at scale when it comes to power. Solar, wind, transmission lines, nuclear, you name it. There will be a group of folks vehemently against it that ties most projects up so they don't even get proposed to begin with.

Re: A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

#90

Post by hoppyhoppy2 »

quickthrowman wrote: post #18

Sane municipalities, counties, and states have noise restrictions for power generation equipment, most of the AHJs in my metro area require no more than 60dB of noise from 100’ away for a generator, that would easily prevent gas turbines from operating. It’s common enough that generator manufacturers make different levels of enclosures to comply with noise regulations. It’s likely impossible to use gas turbines to ge…

*Medicaid
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