[quickthrowman]

Why is that a problem? It might raise the temp within a few hundred feet of the chillers by 0.5-1F which is substantially less than an urban heat island temp delta vs surrounding rural land.

A sane municipality will require sound mitigation on generators, chillers, and other loud equipment. Sure, there are shitty places that don’t take care of their citizens that will let you run natural gas turbines to generate power, but it’s possible to contain the bad effects of data centers with local and state regulations.

I’ll take a data center that evaporates water to replace the iron casting foundry in my neighborhood any day.

[grim_io]

It's not about the heat radiating from the data center, it's about the noise generated trying to cool the beast.

The power usage is massive, and that's still a very much limited resource for which everyone competes for.

Adding to your edit: Would you feel the same about adding an AI data center on top of the iron casting foundry you already have to deal with?

[quickthrowman]

You can buy chillers with enclosures that limit the sound to a reasonable volume, Google “chiller noise attenuation”. You can add walls around lots of chillers to further limit the noise.

If the data center follows the city statutes for noise levels at the property line that exist in my municipality, then sure, I’ll take the data center above the iron foundry.

> Power usage is massive

The utility can approve or deny the connection. Data centers in areas without any available power are not getting grid connections.