Datacenters are the newest NIMBY (not in my backyard) things, as if they were a gasoline refinery. On some level, I get this. What’s hyped is they’ll suck up all the power, they’ll grab all the water, all for a addition of jobs in the single digits.
That last one, I believe. The others, notsomuch. But I hear the panic every single day. One one of the sites I visit, I found this:
Ok. That isn’t a campus. All these buildings are clearly warehouses or distribution centers. I’ve been working in datacenters practically my whole career. I’ve been into countless. Not one of them has had more than a two door loading dock. And that inset image? Those appear to be settling tanks at a shit plant. I’m fairly certain datacenters aren’t going to use shitplant water.
The complaints are all the same; they’ll gobble up all the power and water. They are noisy and will disturb the neighborhood.
More bullshit.
Many I’ve been to are in office or industrial parks. One banking one that I’ve worked in is at the edge of a neighborhood that borders a small business park, not too terribly far from where I lived. It’s nestled down in a hollow such that even though it’s 250K square feet, you’d drive right past and not notice it. I doubt many that live anywhere around know it’s there and what it does. There’s no corporate signage whatsoever. Yet, it’s packed wall to wall with gear.
Let’s hit a few of these out of the park. First is noise. I’ve never been to one that you could hear anything outside of it. Even at the medical lab I worked the only noise would be in the summer when they were running the generators. Even then, it was loud in the parking lot by the exhaust pipes, but you wouldn’t notice it otherwise. I think the nearest houses were 1/2 mile away, probably more.
Far as power goes, The massive AI centers they are planning will need their own, or a dedicated generation facility. To be honest, the best thing here is that all of a sudden common sense nuclear power is now a thing. Not so long ago, it didn’t matter that a nuke plant has nearly zero carbon emissions, they wanted them banned. Now, they want their AI toys, so all of a sudden what was unthinkable a few years ago is probably going to happen. And why not? We’ve been powering subs and carriers for decades with sealed nukes.
What they don’t understand is that these centers will have locomotive size diesel generators to handle the load if the utilities fail. The medical lab I worked in had two. Just like locomotives, they had a 12″ open pipe exhaust system. I’m going to guess they aren’t injecting DEF in those.
Far as the water goes, I don’t see it. So I asked Lumo, (I’m a proton fan), about it. It explained that cooling with water was the cheapest way. So it goes for cooling, as well as water is used in electrical generation plants.
Is it?
I’ve never been to a datacenter that had a water chiller system. The ones I’ve worked in had systems similar to grocery store refrigeration units. Closed systems with refrigerant. I have a buddy in the HVAC business I ought to ask. I know in the past he’s delivered refrigerant to these sorts of places. Are they using it instead of air in the condensing coils? Don’t know, never seen it.
That said, this is the more worrisome matter for me here in Texas. We’re letting every Tom, Dick, and Mary move here. We’re putting in apartments all over the place. I was told by a dude that worked for the water authority that they are indeed planning. I certainly hope so.
But a data center isn’t all that different than any other heavy industry. Far as I can see, they are treating it as such. At least from what I’ve seen here. Far as the folks that lost water pressure in that image? Bullshit. That’s not how plumbing works. A city water distribution system doesn’t work like your home. Something broke, like a pumping station or a feeder pipe.
Unless you’re in someplace blue like Flint, I doubt this happened because datacenter.
I’m with Denniger here. AI has the stink of the internet bubble in 2000. I love the concept that when AI screws up and you have to do it yourself, it has negative value. He has pieces on this all the time. It’s great and wonderful tech.
Question; How does anyone make money from it? Per token? Per request? Advertising?
Just like the internet boom – cool stuff. How do I get paid? The expense for gear, power, real estate, and bandwidth is way more than back in the day. It’s gonna pop and people will get stuck without a chair when the music stops. He had a great piece with an example about what happened in 2000. Companies blew up. He could score the gear, which was fairly new, at pennies on the dollar. That put stress on equipment manufacturers (like Lucent, where I was working at the time) so they cratered and merged. Lived through that. I got the t-shirt.
Once AI gets figured out (what it’s useful for), it’ll happen and happen fast. Just like last time.
Inspected By Pat 