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by dmurray 742 days ago
> my recent 20 mile bike ride in Loudon county was nothing but massive datacenters and crisscrossing powerlines to support them. The western side of neighboring Prince William County is now being consumed for data centers.

Is this actually true or hyperbole? Ireland has the same size and population as Virginia is described as a major location for data centres, but all the data centres on the island combined take up less than one square km [0]. By comparison, Dublin Airport is 10 square km.

Sounds like Virginia needs to be two orders of magnitude more dense in DCs, or have them developed exactly in a ribbon along your route, to really dominate the landscape like that.

[0] https://baxtel.com/data-center/republic-of-ireland
2 comments
ideonexus 741 days ago
What does Ireland having the same size and population as Virginia have to do with my comment? Virginia is a state and I was specifically referring to Loudon and Prince William Counties, which are very tiny in proportion to the entire state of Virginia. Look up "Loudon County Data Center Alley" to understand the proportions and density of this project.

https://biz.loudoun.gov/datacenteralley/

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halJordan 741 days ago
It's hyperbolic of course, but there is an ongoing NIMBY battle over the next datacenter. And it is a huge datacenter, dont get me wrong. The company bidding recently said it would convert a shitton of the land it would be given into greenspaces that yon biker could bike through. And we can be clear here too, if you can afford to bike in Loudon then you work for one of the companies directly requiring this new datacenter, so not sure why he's "conflicted" (nimbyism)
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ideonexus 741 days ago
"if you can afford to bike in Loudon"

I don't follow your reasoning. It costs nothing to ride a bicycle in most of America. We have bike paths everywhere that are free for anyone to enjoy. You also don't have to live in a locality to enjoy the bike paths there.

For the record, on this specific outing I was doing volunteer trail-surveying. I live in Prince William County. I think the Data Centers are awesome and I love them, the tax revenues they bring in, and the jobs that come with them. It was clear from my comment that I am conflicted about the incredible energy-consumption, not the data centers themselves.

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