Why should data center hubs, like NoVA, carry a disproportionate local burden for AI, a global service?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why not put the data centers in places where they can be powered by electricity from renewable sources (e.g. Texas wind and solar, geothermal in Iceland, etc.)? Also, why don’t utilities charge the companies a high rate, rather than passing it on to regional consumers?

Proximity to existing data centers and fiber networks is one of the most significant factors that determines placement for new data centers. Information typically needs to bounce around through multiple different company data centers before it gets to the end user. Lower latency is very important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not put the data centers in places where they can be powered by electricity from renewable sources (e.g. Texas wind and solar, geothermal in Iceland, etc.)? Also, why don’t utilities charge the companies a high rate, rather than passing it on to regional consumers?

Proximity to existing data centers and fiber networks is one of the most significant factors that determines placement for new data centers. Information typically needs to bounce around through multiple different company data centers before it gets to the end user. Lower latency is very important.

That's wrong. We can centrally plan our way out of this mess with just a few decades of government studies on the optimal locations. We will need to select a committee first to choose the selection criteria.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should areas where crops are grown carry a disproportionate load of the farming when everyone everywhere eats food?

Farms presumably generate some local economic activity, whereas data centers are run by companies based elsewhere and require very little manpower while using finite high-value resources. I think OP asks a valid question.

You're underestimating the overall value those data centers bring. Part of the reason that Reston has a large number of tech jobs is because companies have data centers in that area.

Correct.

Also, fewer jobs means less expense for local services (especially schools). Northern Virginia data centers provide hundreds of millions of dollars in local taxes.

[Anonymous]

Data centers bring tons of tax revenue for localities - it’s why PW has more money for its schools- and attract tech companies who want to be near data centers. The data centers themselves don’t have many employees.

[Anonymous]

How much water do VA’s data centers take from the Potomac? What will get water priority when we have another drought? People or data centers?

[Anonymous]

I think it’s Dominions decision to do the offshore wind farms. It was a boondoggle that hasn’t paid off now that Trump is cancelling the wind farms. Dominion paid a lot to lease that land.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not put the data centers in places where they can be powered by electricity from renewable sources (e.g. Texas wind and solar, geothermal in Iceland, etc.)? Also, why don’t utilities charge the companies a high rate, rather than passing it on to regional consumers?

Proximity to existing data centers and fiber networks is one of the most significant factors that determines placement for new data centers. Information typically needs to bounce around through multiple different company data centers before it gets to the end user. Lower latency is very important.

That's wrong. We can centrally plan our way out of this mess with just a few decades of government studies on the optimal locations. We will need to select a committee first to choose the selection criteria.

DP. I'm not sure why you're saying that's wrong. That's exactly how the internet and hosted services work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much water do VA’s data centers take from the Potomac? What will get water priority when we have another drought? People or data centers?

Now your concern with data centers is that every 10 years or so you might be told to not water lawn?

This is a relatively water-rich region. This is a strange thing to focus on here. As you suggested, nearly all of the data centers pull water from the Potomac. But it is the municipalities that pull from wells that have run into water shortages, not the ones that pull from the Potomac.

[Anonymous]

Datacenter person here. Datacenters cover 95% of Loudoun county's annual operating budget. They not only tax the land, but they tax all the equipment inside. A lot of that is owned by other companies, based outside VA, so VA gets taxes from them too.

Datacenters create a huge amount of construction jobs when being built. Afterwards, they employ a mix of highly-skilled IT engineers, and building engineers. These are all well-paid jobs, and datacenters are staffed 24/7 so the number of FTEs employed over the course of a month or week is reasonably high. Sure, it's not the employment per acre you'd see at a shopping mall, but it's not awful. They also don't generate much traffic compared to a mall.

As for AI, first of all, most datacenter space is used to host applications, not AI. Think thing like the billing system for your local water company, or the email for your company. About 20% of datacenter space is currently used for "AI workloads" though that will rise.

But... like with all new technologies in the early stages, AI is getting incredibly more efficient over time. We've seen roughly a 10-fold improvement in efficiency in the last 2 years. There's also a commercial reason to do so -- more efficient AI = lower costs for the companies that provide it.

As for power, datacenters pay more for power than residential customers. Dominion Power bills datacenters at Schedule 10 or GS-4 schedule rates. This gives datacenters big incentive to drive down power costs. It's why we moved to hot aisle/cold aisle setups some years ago, as it's more efficient airflow for cooling purposes.

Next on water use: the new datacenters are being built using grey or recycled water for cooling, and employing more liquid cooling. The current issue is a lot of water evaporates in the cooling process, so that's where the water is going. Loudoun Water charges datacenters the higher "Estimated Flow" rate instead of how typical residential rates work, so again there is a commercial incentive to make datacenters more water efficient.

Now imagine a world without datacenters, so everyone has to go into the office every day instead of some working from home because Zoom/etc isn't an option. During Covid lockdown, all of us in the industry still went into the office to make sure all the services you relied on stayed up and running. We all carried special documents in our cars authorizing us to be out on the roads during the 1st month of lockdown, though I never had to use it as the roads were empty of traffic enforcement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much water do VA’s data centers take from the Potomac? What will get water priority when we have another drought? People or data centers?

Now your concern with data centers is that every 10 years or so you might be told to not water lawn?

This is a relatively water-rich region. This is a strange thing to focus on here. As you suggested, nearly all of the data centers pull water from the Potomac. But it is the municipalities that pull from wells that have run into water shortages, not the ones that pull from the Potomac.

I haven’t watered my lawn in 20 years. I’m
Talking about drinking water. The Potomac belongs to Maryland and fights over how much Virginia sucks from it are not infrequent. Did you just move here?

[Anonymous]

There needs to be more regulation. They should be paying for more of the regional electricity impact burdens.

And there the automated AI replies during normal searches etc is so wasteful and sucks.

No one cares about the environmental impacts (GHGs and water use for every click) it's so depressing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There needs to be more regulation. They should be paying for more of the regional electricity impact burdens.

And there the automated AI replies during normal searches etc is so wasteful and sucks.

No one cares about the environmental impacts (GHGs and water use for every click) it's so depressing.

The irony of complaining about this on a web site that is hosted in a data center...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much water do VA’s data centers take from the Potomac? What will get water priority when we have another drought? People or data centers?

Now your concern with data centers is that every 10 years or so you might be told to not water lawn?

This is a relatively water-rich region. This is a strange thing to focus on here. As you suggested, nearly all of the data centers pull water from the Potomac. But it is the municipalities that pull from wells that have run into water shortages, not the ones that pull from the Potomac.

I haven’t watered my lawn in 20 years. I’m
Talking about drinking water. The Potomac belongs to Maryland and fights over how much Virginia sucks from it are not infrequent. Did you just move here?

It's not really a practical problem at this time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What benefits are they bringing? It isn’t a plethora of jobs and tax revenue.

Loudoun County is making out like a bandit with the revenue the data centers are bringing. Just look all the love the County officials are constantly lavishing on them.

The data centers also create jobs. But I’d wager those getting the jobs aren’t multi-generational NoVAns.

As the current Congress and president prove, politicians will spend money as fast as they can get their votes or executive orders on it. Loudoun now gets about $600 million in data center tax revenue every year - about 1/3 or the county budget. Taxes have not gone done a penny. In fact, Loudoun - home to more data centers than any other jurisdiction in the world, is one of the highest taxed counties in state of Virginia. Prince William is one of the few counties that has a higher tax rate. Prince William is doing its best to beat Loudoun in its role as the top data center destination. A couple of years ago, it rescinded its decision to set aside 2100 acres as a "rural crescent" with important restrictions on land use. Now that 2100 acres is open for the data center business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What benefits are they bringing? It isn’t a plethora of jobs and tax revenue.

Loudoun County is making out like a bandit with the revenue the data centers are bringing. Just look all the love the County officials are constantly lavishing on them.

The data centers also create jobs. But I’d wager those getting the jobs aren’t multi-generational NoVAns.

As the current Congress and president prove, politicians will spend money as fast as they can get their votes or executive orders on it. Loudoun now gets about $600 million in data center tax revenue every year - about 1/3 or the county budget. Taxes have not gone done a penny. In fact, Loudoun - home to more data centers than any other jurisdiction in the world, is one of the highest taxed counties in state of Virginia. Prince William is one of the few counties that has a higher tax rate. Prince William is doing its best to beat Loudoun in its role as the top data center destination. A couple of years ago, it rescinded its decision to set aside 2100 acres as a "rural crescent" with important restrictions on land use. Now that 2100 acres is open for the data center business.

OK. It sounds like those counties are getting a significant benefit from those data centers. I'm sure other counties would love to have $600M coming in.