Backlash to data centers prompts political upset in northern Virginia
By MATTHEW BARAKAT
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — The tech industry’s drive to dot the Virginia landscape with data centers may have hit a glitch this week in Prince William County.
[...]
The plan, called the Prince William Digital Gateway, prompted one of the region’s biggest land-use disputes in decades. It was approved despite vocal opposition from residents concerned that the data centers are noisy, ugly, and consume massive amounts of electricity that require the addition of high-voltage transmission lines.
[...]
Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, said that data centers can make a compelling argument to local officials about the tax benefits that accrue from hosting data centers.
“The industry prioritizes maintaining an open, active, and collaborative dialogue with elected officials and candidates for office, their constituents, and other community stakeholders,” he said in a statement.
I view throwing everything into NOVA as being lazy. Throwing so many at one place isn't good for resiliency.
there's nyc and chicago and california (and dallas)
but..
The discussions in local news (in nova) seem to center around:
"but the noise!"
"but the beautiful scenery!"
"but the water poisoning!!"
there were, apparently, some actual problems with how
prince-william-county did their re-zoning work...
like, I think, one of the administration folks 'had a ton of money
tied up in DC company stock...' (that person may have recused
themselves, but)
If you peel back the layers a bunch of it actually looks pretty
horrible for the people protesting:
"NIMBY problems"
"Our 'heritage'"
i'm sure it'll work out in the end, but ... gonna be fun to watch.
Even traditional data centers have not been known to be especially
considerate about scheduling their -loud- genset tests. Doesn't matter
so much in the middle of an industrial zone but when you do it near
where people live you're going to make them angry.
I view throwing everything into NOVA as being lazy. Throwing so many at one place isn’t good for resiliency.
there’s nyc and chicago and california (and dallas)
but…
The discussions in local news (in nova) seem to center around:
“but the noise!”
This is relatively silly unless the local grid is extraordinarily unreliable. Unless the generators are running,
you can rarely hear a datacenter beyond the bounds of its parking lot.
“but the beautiful scenery!”
This one might be somewhat valid if it wasn’t likely to become some other form of warehouse anyway.
“but the water poisoning!!”
??? I find it hard to believe that data centers are big emitters of water pollution. Someone’s going to have
to explain this one to me.
there were, apparently, some actual problems with how
prince-william-county did their re-zoning work…
like, I think, one of the administration folks ‘had a ton of money
tied up in DC company stock…’ (that person may have recused
themselves, but)
If you peel back the layers a bunch of it actually looks pretty
horrible for the people protesting:
“NIMBY problems”
“Our ‘heritage’”
i’m sure it’ll work out in the end, but … gonna be fun to watch.
I’ll bring marshmallows, who wants to bring the chocolate and the graham crackers to this dumpster fire?
> The discussions in local news (in nova) seem to center around:
> "but the noise!"
>
> i'm sure it'll work out in the end, but ... gonna be fun to watch.
arguably, people buying into the idea that blatantly flim-flamming
folks aren't going to flim-flamming them is.. not related here, at
all.
(that article is about limestone, TN, not west virginia - west nor
virginia appear in the article)
Even traditional data centers have not been known to be especially
considerate about scheduling their -loud- genset tests. Doesn't matter
so much in the middle of an industrial zone but when you do it near
where people live you're going to make them angry.
sure, I believe the various nova parts have reasonable agreements
about how/when to do these
sorts of tests though.
I view throwing everything into NOVA as being lazy. Throwing so many at one place isn't good for resiliency.
there's nyc and chicago and california (and dallas)
but..
The discussions in local news (in nova) seem to center around:
"but the noise!"
This is relatively silly unless the local grid is extraordinarily unreliable. Unless the generators are running,
you can rarely hear a datacenter beyond the bounds of its parking lot.
yes.
"but the beautiful scenery!"
This one might be somewhat valid if it wasn’t likely to become some other form of warehouse anyway.
it's their 'heritage' that they are worried about.
"but the water poisoning!!"
??? I find it hard to believe that data centers are big emitters of water pollution. Someone’s going to have
to explain this one to me.
there's plenty of, already available, discussion about how this is
just a trope being used instead of 'but our heritage'.
yea, it's just not at all an actual problem.
there were, apparently, some actual problems with how
prince-william-county did their re-zoning work...
like, I think, one of the administration folks 'had a ton of money
tied up in DC company stock...' (that person may have recused
themselves, but)
If you peel back the layers a bunch of it actually looks pretty
horrible for the people protesting:
"NIMBY problems"
"Our 'heritage'"
i'm sure it'll work out in the end, but ... gonna be fun to watch.
I’ll bring marshmallows, who wants to bring the chocolate and the graham crackers to this dumpster fire?
I have 1 lawn chair, you'll need to bring your own.
The noise complaints are about HVAC fan noise (24-hour droning) from cooling towers or roof top farms of evaporative condensers.
The water complaints are about the one-use water cooling towers
The electric grid complaints are about the demand on the grid making the entire region less stable and proposed construction of new high-voltage tower corridors for data centers.
And if you didn't know, some VC-funded companies can be a**-holes and not known for being good neighbors or anything besides making money.
And yes, I helped design & build several early data centers in NOVA
I will note that the grid in Loudoun county (arguably the center of the Northern Virginia data center boom) has actually gotten a LOT better than it was when I first moved here. Some of that was rebuild started before the surge, due to just how bad it was. But I am fairly sure that some of it is a side-effect of the build itself.
There’s probably close to that number in the South Bay Area of California as well.
The noise complaints are about HVAC fan noise (24-hour droning) from cooling towers or roof top farms of evaporative condensers.
I get it, but reality is that at most datacenter, this noise simply disappears once you get much outside of the parking lot. Especially if there’s a busy roadway anywhere nearby.
The water complaints are about the one-use water cooling towers
That does seem rather silly… We don’t have those in California.
The electric grid complaints are about the demand on the grid making the entire region less stable and proposed construction of new high-voltage tower corridors for data centers.
Yeah, I can kind of understand those, but as long as the grid is properly planned, it really shouldn’t have a destabilizing effect. In fact, many datacenter in California do CoGen and end up providing additional grid stability.
And if you didn't know, some VC-funded companies can be a**-holes and not known for being good neighbors or anything besides making money.
Oh, yeah… We have those here too.
And yes, I helped design & build several early data centers in NOVA
California is well-known for its state enviromental laws and zoning, so some of the issues with the 'wild-west' zoning of rural Virginia are different.
When data centers developers aren't required to add cost in NOVA, they don't. No water conservation, no air-quality controls, no off-site sound silencers. Stuff that may be required by California zoning.
I remember when we specified 'hospital-grade' silencers on outdoor equipment; and the push-back about the 'extra-cost.'
NOVA counties had zoning rules about decibel levels, but not sound frequencies or duration. The fan noise from the largest data centers in NOVA/Maryland have been measured up to a couple of miles away.
While the noise level may be less than the legal decibel level, the 24-hour drone (frequency) seems to penetrate standard house and building construction in NOVA. Its the night-time constant fan droning noises when people are trying to sleep which cause the most complaints.
As data centers proliferate, neighbors knock the noise
Data center cooling fan system noise control - low cost + efficiency gains
What’s not to love about a power company that literally qualifies as a recidivist felon?
It is my sincere hope to finish my mortgage and then start putting money towards electrical independence. (Wind, more solar, batteries, and disconnecting Persistent Graft and Extortion).
I'm waiting on a software upgrade for my inverter to hook up a generator to refill the battery when it gets too low. Not off the grid, but not at the mercy of PGE's fuckery.
How many datacenters are in Norcal? I imagine that it's a lot, but PGE's rates are like 2x the rest of the country. At least for residential. I always got a kick of Google putting a datacenter in the Dalles in Oregon -- basically mainlining the Columbia river.
It appears that Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> said:
Dalles: government subsidized Hydroelectric Power, that’s why.
Well that maybe, but electric rates are hella cheap in Oregon regardless.
Well, yeah, that's what he said although I would argue about the
subsidy part. The feds subsidized construction somewhere between 50
and 90 years ago, but the power charges have paid for O+M since then.
If you have the right geography, hydro is really cheap. Just ask the
people in Labrador who sell their power to Hydro Quebec for 0.2c/kWh.
By the way, here in the decadent northeast I pay about 9.5c/kwh
retail. What are the prices like in Oregon?
(and dallas)