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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

#91

Post by mindslight »

phil21 wrote: post #86
mindslight wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 transmiss…

It's only "retroactively" changing "the rules" because "the rules" are an instance of regulatory capture limiting the policing of externalities to only ones that have been enumerated. Otherwise the general principle is that if you cause harm to other people, you are responsible for that harm. And industrial noise at all hours of the day is harm.

You'll get zero argument from me about the need to build more power plants and transmission lines. But this of course must be done with proper compensation to those affected, not just a regulatory giveaway after finding some disenfranchised area. In fact one might say that such regulatory giveaways have artificially lowered the expected cost of building a new plant below the actual cost, thus discouraging investment at the true cost.

You can also look at the onerousness of permitting processes (etc) as a result of a regime whereby once something is built, if it causes problems then nobody can do anything about it.

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

#93

Post by _DeadFred_ »

downrightmike wrote: post #75
bluepuma77 wrote: post #70

The US seems like a pretty huge area for the number of people living there. Why do they need to build a data center 100m from a house, why not build it 1000m away?

utilities cost more to run further

I think you mean 'the utility hike due to the datacenter wouldn't be able to be shared split with the house then'.

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

#94

Post by JuniperMesos »

bilekas wrote: post #3

> Stephenson said the data center’s operations team had not seen any “abnormalities” on the day in question. > “However, we take any reports of issues at the site seriously,” Stephenson wrote Absolutely no abnormalities because this is by design, but nobody wanted to pay attention when approving the building and zoning. Amazing what some money to politicians will get you. I can't even imaging living within ear shot o…

Why wouldn't they be allowed to vote on it? How does a zoning rule about gas turbines get enacted at all, except by some body noticing that it's a problem and then voting to create such an ordinance? (Or by voting not to do so, if they think it isn't actually that much of a problem or if there's a way to mitigate it or if the benefits outweigh the costs, just like with any other issue that's within the purview of the county officials?)

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

#95

Post by JuniperMesos »

anakaine wrote: post #78
bilekas wrote: post #3

> Stephenson said the data center’s operations team had not seen any “abnormalities” on the day in question. > “However, we take any reports of issues at the site seriously,” Stephenson wrote Absolutely no abnormalities because this is by design, but nobody wanted to pay attention when approving the building and zoning. Amazing what some money to politicians will get you. I can't even imaging living within ear shot o…

Towards the end of the article: > "It was only after the data center was operating, following a tour he took of the facility, that Turner said county officials realized the data center was “running in island mode.” > “It was very impressive, but it was obvious that this is not what we thought was allowed,” Turner said." Youve stated its corruption by officials. Its rather clear, however, that when the company were to…

Maybe there's corruption by officials at the local electric power company and that's why it takes 3 years to get an industrial grid connection. Or maybe there isn't actually any corruption happening and the local electric power company is just building out infrastructure slower or less efficiently than it could in principle be, for the ordinary sorts of reasons why things in this world are not perfect.

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

#96

Post by JuniperMesos »

squibonpig wrote: post #48
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…

There's an assumption underlying what you said that datacenters are gonna get built one way or another. But these aren't sewage plants or power plants or desalination plants or whatever, they aren't particularly important for the quality of life of most people. We could just kinda... not build them? How about we don't let them get built most places so it becomes fairly expensive. Make it so expensive that only say 1/…

It's bad for my quality of life if some of the economic inputs to things I use (like "the internet", writ large) get made deliberately more expensive to build via regulatory fiat. Indeed, this is basically deliberate NIMBYism, and NIMBYism is why housing is scarce and expensive where I live. I don't want policymakers to be able to assert that the only possible use of a datacenter is something they find silly and then change the law to make them more expensive to build.

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

#97

Post by phil21 »

mindslight wrote: post #91
phil21 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 transmiss…

It's only "retroactively" changing "the rules" because "the rules" are an instance of regulatory capture limiting the policing of externalities to only ones that have been enumerated. Otherwise the general principle is that if you cause harm to other people, you are responsible for that harm. And industrial noise at all hours of the day is harm. You'll get zero argument from me about the need to build more power plan…

> You can also look at the onerousness of permitting processes (etc) as a result of a regime whereby once something is built, if it causes problems then nobody can do anything about it.

This is an interesting point I have not considered as much as I should have.

I think it's somewhat circular. As regulations become more and more restrictive on a "global" scale, "local" workarounds are going to become more common and more obnoxious to the local population. If a few jet engines in a parking lot impact 10 people in an extremely negative manner, but a 400 mile transmission line impacts 900 property owners through 90 political districts in a very minor way; the latter is going to be getting far more political scrutiny and be far harder to pull off even though it's better overall.

This will then tilt development into screwing the tiny minority since it's far cheaper and faster (practical) to get done. I don't think this is a good outcome for society over the long term as it erodes the social contract, but it's very interesting to think about how to solve.

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

#98

Post by JuniperMesos »

dionidium wrote: post #23
citrin_ru wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Point is, if you ban anything that makes noise you’ll be left with nothing, it’s pure selfish nimbyism The US is large enough country and it should be possible to build DC far away from homes. That’s a rare case where I support NIMBY. I lived in 1km from a gas fired power station and did bot notice any noise at all. If a DC can be heard it is either too close or too loud.

> That’s a rare case where I support NIMBY. It's kind of darkly funny that NIMBY ever came to refer to housing in the first place. The term was originally meant to apply to stuff exactly like this -- i.e. genuinely noxious uses that most people nevertheless agree are necessary somewhere . Almost everybody is a NIMBY in this sense.

Incumbent homeowners (and sometimes renters in rent-control situations) voting for policies that prevent new housing from being built near them is a huge reason why housing costs so much where I live; and reducing local housing costs is probably the single biggest way that policy changes could directly improve my quality of life.

Also, housing itself is often a genuinely noxious use of land for incumbent homeowners. In part because construction creates noise and dust and requires upgrading other local physical infrastructure - but also because more housing implies more new people living in an existing neighborhood, and additional people living somewhere can themselves cause problems for the incumbent residents.

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