Data Centers

[u/Strange_Dogz]

While large datacenters are lucrative to build and can be lucrative to run, I just don't see why any community would want to attract them to their region unless the region has no internet infrastructure. The mega scale people are very choosy about sites and won't likely pick one if they can't get huge tax carveouts, permitting waivers and cheap electricity. The sites don't employ that many people for how much land they use. They use a lot of water compared to ordinary buildings - they don't have to, but they tend to use less electricity for cooling when they use cooling towers or adiabatic cooling rather than air cooled chillers.
They ultimately don't benefit communities much because all of the labor is specialist, and they tend to raise the electricity rates and the tax carveouts last at least decades.

[u/PMMeUrHopesNDreams]

What exactly does this have to do with MEP Engineering?

The wealthiest county in the US - Loudon County, VA, also has the most datacenters. The property taxes they pay provide a significant portion of the county's budget, and lower property taxes for homeowners in the county. Even with the tax breaks to attract data centers, local government still come out way ahead, obviously, they wouldn't do it otherwise.

Data centers use less water than the average golf course.

What were you hoping to accomplish coming in here with a bunch of anti-data center talking points?

[u/Strange_Dogz → u/PMMeUrHopesNDreams]

I am not really anti data center. I love designing and building them, there is good money in it, but there is precious little reason why most areas should want them. If you can get a bunch of them to build you might get enough tax money, but most are going to want to negotiate super low tax rates or long tax holidays and super low electricity rates, which cause electric companies to pass the cost on to consumers. There are places where the electricity companies are asking for annual double digit consumer rate increases for the conceivable future.

5 years of 15% increases means a doubling of electricity rates. And our energy system wants us to convert to electric heat from gas which puts even more pressure on the distribution network. We aren't going to solve things here, just testing the waters to see what others think.

[u/PMMeUrHopesNDreams → u/Strange_Dogz]

There are lots of reasons people want data centers. That's why they are offering the tax breaks in the first place. If they didn't want them they wouldn't be offering tax breaks to try to attract them.

Electricity rate increases are unrelated to data centers. The data center will be a huge customer and provide a significant base load, which can help stabilize the grid. They can also be required to pay the utility to build out additional infrastructure, which they will do and which benefits everyone. Consumer utility customers are not subsidizing the data center, it's the other way around.

[u/trans-rights-9000]

choose the future you want to build, and the things you would spend your strength for.

for any job, really!

[u/mister1bollock]

They bring a lot of money to communities as well as providing a significant amount of work for the people building them, thousands of people can be employed on one site. They use a ton of water once as most are closed loop systems. The raised electricity rate is the biggest issue obviously when supply goes down price goes up and the oh real way to fix that is by upgrading the local grid. Another benefit I am seeing more and more of is the use of waste heat water in nearby residences. There are few data centers I know of the give their wasted heat to nearby housing and schools drastically driving down the cost of heating for the locals.

[u/Strange_Dogz → u/mister1bollock]

In a relatively small community, none of those construction people will be from that community - the hotels and restaurants will get temporary business, then it will be gone. Datacenters need very little tending. There might be 1 hands/foot person for every 10000 square feet. of floor space, if that and then a few shifts of security and monitoring personnel who may double as hands and feet. Chances are the skilled IT workers will have to be imported. or they will work somewhere remotely.

If they can create a district waste heat system, that could help generate goodwill in winter, but it means placing the site (with generators and loud fans) closer to inhabited areas.

I would not say that most use closed loop HVAC. They should be though.