With that said, by the standards of industrial sites data centres are quiet, low traffic and smell free. An industrial area that can’t build a data centre certainly can’t build a steelworks or oil refinery or leather tannery.
No one bats an eye when an air conditioner runs.
In the US
I find their noise pretty obnoxious. Out of respect for my neighbours, when I get around to installing one, I'll be getting the absolute quietest model available.
Power plants are all over, even in populated areas. They’re not so bad either (except perhaps coal).
There is no fundamental reason that datacenters need to be especially unpleasant to their neighbors.
I don't have any datacenters near me but I can hear some heavy hums from the washing machine 3 floors up when it put my head on my pillow, for some reason it just propagates through the building physically. When I walk around I don't hear it. Datacenter noise can be the same.
IMO they should be put away from habitation, there's no reason for them to be near there anyway
I agree, but that's a hard problem (in the US anyway). Unless you're plopping data centers in the middle of national parks, or in the middle of the desert where water is going to be a problem, you are nearly always going to be within some small mile radius of civilization. Plus the cost of trenching new fiber out in the middle of nowhere.
The same reasons humans want to concentrate in a particular area (access to jobs, infrastructure) are the same things that data centers need.
Once water-less cooling tech like this improves then yeah, just plopping them in the middle of the unpopulated desert becomes viable (assuming you can get the fiber out there and latency is tolerable), so long as they generate their own power.
Imo we should just solve the problems with data centers being near cities. Manage/regulate the noise and any waste (heat included, it shouldn't drastically impact the neighbors) and make them pay for any utility capacity/reliability upgrades needed. If this article is right and water usage can be nearly eliminated then it seems like the rest should be solvable? Especially if we can take the extra heat and use it for local power or heating needs.
If you cycle between 45 C and 55 C water temperature (as mentioned by the press release), you are only getting a 10 C delta. That isn't even enough for district heating, probably not even with heat pumps.
Now if you have something like a steel foundry, that have much hotter cooling water, you can absolutely use the heat for district heating, but even then it usually isn't enough for cost effective electricity generation. Even when it is waste heat, as the equipment to handle it still costs money and requires maintenance.
You are calculating the wrong delta T. To heat a space, you need your working fluid to be warmer that the space you’re heating by an appropriate amount.
55°C is certainly on the cool side to heat a building, but it’s entirely workable with a high-area, highish-thermal-conductivity system. Here’s an actual chart:
https://www.warmboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/WaterTe...
You don’t actually want an absurdly warm floor.
Even for buildings that need warmer fluid, water at 45-55°C is a fantastic source for a heat pump.
There low-temp/cold DH systems out there that rely on heatpumps in the buildings to extract the heat. Less losses in the network and you can even use them for cooling, but needs heat pumps everywhere.
In comparison, a traditional heat exhanger is pretty simple technology; just a hunk of metal with a valve.
Right. Vibration propagates through solid (and liquid) materials.
But this can all be measured and controlled, and there's nothing special about datacenters. A building that is hundreds of feet away will couple to your pillow much less strongly than a washing machine in your building. And the washing machine often has a wildly unbalanced load and minimal decoupling between itself and the floor, whereas a big fan in a datacenter or other industrial building ought to be balanced and also ought to be installed on decoupling mounts.
If datacenter operators (cough xAI) are being lazy about properly selecting, installing and maintaining equipment, then you can have a problem. Otherwise you have a much smaller problem.
People said this about high voltage electric lines and wind turbines. Blind tests proved they were imagining things.
Sure there is, being a good neighbor costs more than being a bad neighbor
But that is not how corporations roll. They want the cheapest shit that they can get away with. No regulations only corruption. Which is middle of nowhere America.
What I don't understand is putting these things in populated areas.
Besides, it's not about people, it's about power. Pulling a few MW into middle of nowhere is prohibitively expensive.
The idea of building robust, lightly-staffed technical facilities in obscure places all over the country is nothing even remotely new. It's how the long-distance telephone network was constructed and successfully operated in the decades before satellites took over: https://telephoneworld.org/long-distance-companies/att-long-...
https://blog.andymasley.com/p/contra-benn-jordan-data-center...
At no point in his video does Benn claim to be representing the consensus. The whole premise of his videos is that he is introducing something for which there is very little consensus! Each paper has its own conclusions, which don't have to be the same as Benn's. This whole thing boils down to an attack on Benn's character ability to draw meaningful conclusions on his own.
I am not.
Benn claims that the papers say one thing when in fact, if you read them (even the abstracts), they mostly say the exact opposite. It's that simple.
I thought it was a joke of some kind and eventually he would give the "reveal" but no, he finished the video without ever considered that USB is a host/device connection - and although USB-C confusingly introduced a symmetric cable, you cannot connect two devices back-to-back (one end has to be a host) and expect anything useful to happen. And that's why Apple sells a "camera" kit to allow an iPad to act as the host to USB devices.
Seeing him use an oscilloscope to diagnose an Ethernet issue in an earlier video had given me the expectation that he was technically knowledgeable and interesting. So it was shocking that he could present conclusions with such a confident and knowledgeable air, having missed such a basic and fundamental fact about USB.
And there was no push back in the comments that I could see at the time - so seemingly half a million viewers would have finished the video feeling they had learnt something.
So what, winters would be no more? Snow will disappear, no more ice-men and christmas trees, and subzero conditions in general, too?
You do eat, don't you?
If production increased (dramatically) while temperatures increased in the past, could this trend continue?
I think we are going to need heating.
I don't live next to one but I'd take constant humming over the constant stop/go traffic noise, honking, squeaky brakes, slamming doors and revving engines I now have on my western side of the apartment, thanks to the unemployment office the city opened on my street not too long ago.
So how come constant humming is somehow an illegal nuisance, but we've been expected to put up with the much more annoying urban traffic noise for decades just fine?
My parents apartment have constant humming anyway thanks to the HVAC system on the roof of the nearby supermarket and white/brown noise is far more tolerable and easy to tune out than traffic noises.
For one, there tends to be little traffic at night when most people want quiet in order to sleep. Driving is also something (nearly) everyone does and benefits directly from, so negative externalities are easier to accept. It is much harder to accept a new source of noise near your home you haven't asked for and don't directly benefit from.
This reads a little too close to driving being an inherently good thing or some sort of objective requirement, but it's only that way in certain urban places because the built environment makes it as arduous as possible to do those things without.
Something that pisses me off about many urban places that don't even otherwise require people to drive, is that many who do use their cars the most often have their neighborhoods protected from the noise they contribute to everywhere else. This whole thing of putting apartments only where there's already the most disgusting car-infested thoroughfares; "sorry, can't have an apartment one street in off the main drag, that's only for bungalows! Don't like it? Get richer. Excuse me while I drive through your bedroom and park for free in front."
This, so much this. All the noise producing infrastructure in cities is dumped in the highly dense poor areas, and the rich people living in the quiet suburbs in single family home who need to drive in front of your home, are protected by this externality.
Like thanks, I guess, for doing the absolute minimum that should have already been the default policy for 50 years
https://xcancel.com/BrianEntin/status/2067930868191035474?s=...
My GPUs at Hurricane Electric in Fremont are also completely unnoticeable outside the building. Inside, when I'm working at the cabinets it's obviously deafening. Outside you wouldn't even know. Realistically, the predominant sounds at my home are from the traffic on the Bay Bridge so it's nice when there's congestion because it's quiet.
Honestly, I wish there were more urban datacenters. It's getting quite annoying having to make a 1 hr trek to Fremont every time I want to rack a new server.
There's a lot of them in high rise buildings... but they come with high rise rent.
I like this idea. A small cage in an apartment complex would be a huge selling point.
Or even a La La Land on the corner, urban DC in the back. Winning across the board.
Swimming pool? The cooling can be for a hot tub!
Nearly 10x more people die from the cold than from the heat.
"...9.43% of global deaths were attributable to non-optimal temperatures, with 8.52% from cold and 0.91% from heat."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
I don't think this is climate change propaganda, but your application of this study by evoking it in a discussion about climate change feels like it.
I won't bother sharing the source because you'll find some reason to dismiss it I'm sure.
It's interesting you claim my comment is propaganda when I cite a scientific source and yet have nothing to say about the parent comment which claims we no longer need to worry about heating due to climate change. Which of those comments seems more propagandistic?
I'm nearly positive that was sarcasm.
> Deaths from all natural disasters have dramatically decreased over the last century.
Because of our ability to predict them, and due to advances in scientific knowledge that allows us to more safely handle them. It's not because they've become less deadly. They're also becoming more frequent, and deaths alone isn't their only problem. They also drive loss of shelter, migrations, economic damage, etc.
> you claim my comment is propaganda when I cite a scientific source
Yes, plenty of science is propaganda. The study you cited wasn't propaganda, but the way in which you used it was, because it's not applicable to the way you're using it.
Direct exposure to ambient heat is only one of the many issues related to climate change, and one of the least deadly. As I pointed out, the study didn't include wet bulb events, so even direct heat exposure wasn't properly covered in the study in terms of climate change.
Property values have consistently gone up in that region for decades, and are up to $6 million an acre if there's enough contiguous land to put another data center on.
Many of the people complaining about datacenters would also complain about literally any kind of development.
It's absurd, and serves as evidence that we need a confiscatory wealth tax, if we want to maintain a society.
Consider the following graph which shows the power generation capabilities of China vs. the US during the last 40 years.
https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide?utm_source=sub...
The fact that data centers need to resort to gas turbines is downstream from this bureaucratic, NIMBY-driven impotency.
That said, I agree we need more power generation in this country. Massive rollouts (like in China) would bolster industry while being beneficial to nearly every citizen except those dependent on legacy energy technologies.
Sadly, the party in power opposes the most scalable approaches to this because greatly expanded power generation would hurt margins for a few special interests.
The problem is that apparently you can just ignore that by building in poor places that won't hold you accountable and perhaps don't even have the regulations. If they do, just don't comply with them. Then your gas turbines can be as loud as you like, nobody will stop you. There's this one weird trick where you can pretend your generators aren't turned on, but they are, and they pollute badly. Nobody will call you out on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw
Also you can take people's drinking water to cool your data centre, and promise a water recycling plant, and then just not build it.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/05/xai-water-reuse-pro...
What I forgot to mention is this one weird trick only works if you're a turbo-bastard with an enormous bank account, and the government of the poor place thinks it's in line for a payday.
(Seasonal heat storage is also a thing, Espoo's neighbours have tens of GWh of storage, with a new 90 GWh cavern in the works. Not sure if the systems are interlinked.)
Apparently the local supercomputer cluster in Kajaani has also been hooked up in 2021 and is responsible for a fifth of heating.
Also gas pipes to every home isn't a thing in many countries.
(seriously though, I knew they had hot water, it just never occurred to me how awesome it is to have hot water on the tap)
Only about 2% of the total heating used though...
Then 45 or below is sent back on the return.
DC inlet is 45°C, outlet is 55°C assuming a 10°C ΔT. By the time that's travelled 500m–1km through pipework you've lost a few degrees, so you're arriving at the HIU at maybe 50–52°C. The home radiator circuit then takes that down by around say 12°C, returning ~38°C. Factor in pipe losses on the return leg and you're back at the data centre with maybe 35°C inlet rather than 45°C — meaning the DC output is now only 45°C rather than 55°C, and the whole system gradually degrades each cycle. You could address this by mixing some hot output back into the return to keep the DC inlet stable at 45°C, but eh.
Surely having the input fluid being colder is a benefit, not a problem? Just run the fluid more slowly through the system?
you'd be surprised. If you have high flow, and the pipes are insulated and underground, then after about a week the temperature drop isn't that much. You do have heat losses, but if you have a high enough continuos flow and a big enough pipe, then it'll be low enough to not worry about, especially if the aim is heat shedding rather than efficiency.
My old flat was powered by both the 1970s boilers across the way, and more recently the massive south london incinerator. The pipe cross section was I think 40cm and at peak carried ~3-5 Megawatts of heat. I think it operated at 150c, but that could be me misremembering (this is the later version of the network: https://www.burohappold.com/projects/veolia-southwark-2-0-he... for the councils is they get a maintained heater network, which is much cheaper than doing it themselves (even more now with gas being so expensive) the power station gets to charge for a waste product and it doubles their on paper efficiency, its a win win.)
It's got a "heat energy to/from campus" exchange in there.
That's a link in March and the air temperature was 31°F.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210708150410/https://www.nrel.... is later with air temperature of 68°F.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210708150410/https://www.nrel....
The thermosyphon took it from 90.2°F to 70.8°F ... and then it went to the counterflow cooling towers which took it from 69.8°F to 64.8°F. If that thermosyphon did the majority of the work and there's not too much more in the cooling towers... and that was only rejecting 375kW of heat through evaporation.
Note one of the parameters with it in the dashboard: dry bulb temperature.
https://web.archive.org/web/20251207023030/https://docs.nrel... for more info on the thermosyphon.
I'm disappointed that the dashboard isn't available anymore. It was rather neat to look at.
Some older articles about it:
https://www.nlr.gov/news/detail/program/2023/a-decade-of-gre...
https://www.nlr.gov/computational-science/data-center-coolin... (click through these)
When possible, heat energy from the energy recovery loop is transferred to the building process hot water loop, which provides heat for the office and laboratory spaces within the building. The energy recovery heat exchanger (6) transfers heat from the ERW loop to the process hot water loop.
After re-use potential is exhausted, warm ERW water flows to the fourth floor mechanical room. When temperatures permit, heat is dissipated through a thermosyphon (7), which is an advanced dry cooler that uses refrigerant in a passive cycle to dissipate heat.
Remaining heat is transferred from the ERW loop to a tower water open loop via the cooling tower heat exchanger (8). Cooling towers (9) cool the tower water loop by cascading that water across fill material while drawing ambient air across the fill material. This provides a very energy-efficient way to cool water with sensible (heat dissipated to air without evaporation) and latent (heat dissipated with evaporation) heat transfer. However, this evaporative cooling process requires a continuous source of water.
https://www.nlr.gov/computational-science/reducing-water-usa...
In August 2016, a prototype thermosyphon cooler—an advanced dry cooler that uses refrigerant in a passive cycle to dissipate heat—was installed. The thermosyphon was placed upstream of the HPC Data Center cooling towers at the ESIF to create a hybrid cooling system. The system coordinates the operation for optimum water and operating cost efficiency—using wet cooling when it's hot and dry cooling when it's not.The problem is really how much energy is actually available.
Introducing skylights allows the total fenestration area (windows plus skylights) to be reduced from a maximum 20% of floor area to as low as 12% of floor area while achieving the same baseline average daylight factor target of 5%, and reduces annual heating and cooling energy use and costs in all but two of the 108 models with skylights analyzed. In other words, when different combinations of skylights and windows are used to achieve the same target daylight factor, the heating and cooling energy cost savings are almost always greater when equivalent daylight comes from top‐lighting (skylights) rather than side‐lighting (windows).
Like, it's good idea for a warehouse, limited for housing, people want windows
Skylights also suck because they're exposing the window directly to the sky (and thus rain), whereas conventional windows are somewhat protected by eaves and the fact that the window is vertical so water can't pool on it.
https://blog.andymasley.com/p/contra-benn-jordan-data-center...
Water usage is not a cost with this new technology -- that is what the article is about.
Infrasound is terrifically understudied and should not be discussed definitively based on the findings of a highly-biased amateur, but regardless: fan sound is not a cost with this new technology -- that is what the article is about.
Re:pollution, I suppose all buildings are kinda inherently polluting just by existing. So you've got them on that point!
Most importantly, actually: the person above clearly knows about all this, and was just discussing the benefits on their own. I love me some pedantry (really!) but this attempt seems counterproductive, sorry.
hmm? maybe it differs from time to time? on summer, it IS cost (nearby need to run AC)
You are not wrong, but the whole issue is a bit silly: there should be legal ways for data centres (and other commercial operations) to just send a few million dollars a year to whichever community they need to convince; instead of having to dress it up as free heating.
Presumably you think that the end result of extreme and rapid ai growth is beneficial to most and that is why it shouldn't be slowed down? That arriving earlier at whatever end-point you have in mind will provide so much benefit that it's worth disregarding the pains to get there?
Or is there something else to your argument? Because if there isn't, you are staking an awful lot on your expectation coming true. Especially that going slower doesn't provide any worthwhile benefits to the outcome.
There's nearly 0 downsides to absolute majority of people to continue building out datacenters. Yet I see this derangement syndrome with headlines like "I’d Rather Risk Cancer Than See AI Move This Fast"[0]. This is just as farcical as calling cars a national security threat in 1920s and any sufficient army should be run by cavalry.
0: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/06/ai-cancer-pro...
And when it does, people should obviously go for it. Work out a deal, when there's some surplus to share.
The heat is waste heat. If it cannot be recovered as a profitable source of energy, the datacenter won't be able to pay that few million dollars.
So this waste heat recycling should only be done where and when it makes sense.
(But that's pretty easy: absent any legal requirements, the involved parties have all the right incentives already. It's all internalised between the parties.)
Huh what? Never heard of that one before.
> absent any legal requirements, the involved parties have all the right incentives already
Well... that's the problem, they don't. Sure, datacenter operators could go and offer to install district heating, waste heat recyclers and whatnot, and it would likely be profitable. But, and here it gets annoying, it's not profitable enough.
What makes you think so? Datacentres are already very expensive, and getting permissions quicker (or at all) might be worth a couple million dollars.
> The heat is waste heat. If it cannot be recovered as a profitable source of energy, [...]
Yes, they should make all deals that make sense for both parties, definitely. But it's only viable in some places some of the time.
Also interesting that the article states that this engineering problem hadn’t been solved before. Google pioneered running chips hotter than before. Moreover, we have had water cooling in consumer setups for ages. (At least 30 years.) So what is new is that all chips have been attached to the loop. I couldn’t find what they did with PSU though.
*55C is on the output, read article first pls
Main problem is that it wouldn't work with buildings designed for higher heating temperature so it is limited to new builds. And it is not limited just to replacing heaters, hot water system is also designed to work with higher temperatures so heat exchanger used would have to be significantly larger
Another one is that load is not constant on both sides and not exactly something that can be increased on demand (unless you're fine with burning cycles just to electrically heat, but that's massively inefficient)
That's no longer the case with modern, multi-stage high temperature heat pumps [1]. These consume more electricity, yes, but still achieve far better efficiency than straight burning fuel or resistive heaters.
A 75-MW data center in Mäntsälä has provided 2/3 of the heat for the town (2,500 homes) for a decade [2]
1. https://www.creatingsustainablecities.org.uk/post/case-study...
2. https://www.sustainabilitymenews.com/waste-management/how-fi...
Summer is still an issue, but fun solutions are possible. With the right geology, I think it’s possible to heat an underground volume in the summer and recapture (some of) that heat in the winter. In many, many climates, annual heating costs are far higher than cooling costs, at least if people aren’t stupid with skylights. [0]
[0] As a back-of-the-envelope heuristic, heating or cooling load due to conduction and air exchange is proportional to the difference between indoor and outdoor temperature. Outdoor temperatures of -10F to 30F are not unusual in the winter and are 40-80F away from an indoor temp of 70F. But outdoor temperatures in these climates rarely exceed 95F and are mostly lower in the summer, so that’s 15-25F of cooling. And heat pumps are more efficient at smaller temperature differences.
Radiative heating is an entirely different story.