[HN Gopher] A data center opened next door. Then came the high-p...
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A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine
Author : 1vuio0pswjnm7
Score : 76 points
Date : 2026-03-18 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com)
| notyourwork wrote:
| This is where zoning rules make sense.
| bilekas wrote:
| > Stephenson said the data center's operations team had not seen
| any "abnormalities" on the day in question.
|
| > "However, we take any reports of issues at the site seriously,"
| Stephenson wrote
|
| Absolutely no abnormalities because this is by design, but nobody
| wanted to pay attention when approving the building and zoning.
| Amazing what some money to politicians will get you.
|
| I can't even imaging living within ear shot of these things.
| Horrific quality of life. I can't sleep when my water pump is
| active.
|
| > Turner said county officials didn't understand in 2022 and 2023
| exactly what it meant to have gas turbines at a data center, nor
| did they have zoning rules to address it.
|
| Well then why were they allowed to vote on it ? It's incompetance
| ? Or just straight up corruption.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's getting difficult to tell the difference between
| incompetence and corruption, as widespread as both of them are,
| and how their consequences always overlap.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| One of the ways corruption hides its intentions is lying to
| make it look like incompetence. It takes a very long time for
| the truth to come out and it rarely does but corruption
| depends on people buying the lies and assuming its just
| incompetence.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Incompetence should carry liability as well. If some
| politician signs his name to random documents without
| understanding what he's doing and causes harm to people, he
| should simply pay the price to make the other party whole,
| whatever damage was caused should be undone to the fullest
| possible extent and he should be removed from office for
| good measure because he's clearly too dumb to exercise it
| responsibly.
|
| That's the benign case. If it turns out he wasn't actually
| incompetent but was signing things in exchange for money or
| favors he should go to literal death row. Proven corruption
| should result in the death penalty for all involved.
| progbits wrote:
| You had me in the first half, the last paragraph is going
| way too far.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| If anything it's not going far enough. Corruption should
| be considered high treason and lead to _public
| executions_.
|
| As a common citizen, very few things in this world are
| more demoralizing than witnessing corrupt politicians get
| filthy rich while trading favors, embezzling money,
| creating loopholes for corporations to exploit while
| pretending to regulate them or whatever else it is that
| they do, there are so many scams it's impossible to
| enumerate them all. It breaks one's spirit to realize
| that it's the honest and the just who get punished on a
| daily basis while the corrupt get constantly rewarded.
| That is an incalculable crime against society and should
| absolutely be severely punished.
|
| If they don't like it, they can just not be a politician.
| Nobody asked them to seek power, they fought to be there.
| Normal citizens get to go to jail, not them.
|
| > But he that knew not and committed things worthy of
| stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.
|
| > For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be
| required
|
| > and to whom men have committed much, of him they will
| ask the more.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| What do you mean, "allowed" to vote on it? The county officials
| are the decisionmakers, who should have allowed or not allowed
| them?
|
| It also seems worth noting that these gas turbine generators
| are meant to be the solution to another big complaint people
| have about datacenters, that they might drive up local power
| prices if they plug into the grid. Like you and the people in
| the article, I'm personally very sensitive to noise pollution.
| so to me this sounds like another argument that datacenters
| should connect to the grid after all. But I'm sure some people
| disagree and think it's worth it to save on electricity, and
| others disagree and think there shouldn't be datacenters near
| them at all.
|
| The local government has to resolve the disagreement somehow
| and no solution is going to make everyone happy.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I mean, I'm fine with datacenters plugging into the grid, _if
| they pay for it._ I don 't understand (and I mean feel free
| to explain it) this weird shit where a datacenter goes up and
| everybody's power bills start increasing. I have assumed that
| it's because the grid's facilities require upgrades to meet
| the new demand, but in the case of the "new demand" being
| "one structure consuming an assload of power" it feels
| incredibly shitty to lay that burden on the taxpayers.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Ideally, the revenue from the new customer would be enough
| to cover the upgrades, so long as the new customer makes an
| up-front committment (from which loans can be written) that
| makes their risk (of having to pay for the upgrades even if
| they shut down much sooner than expected) about equal to if
| they build out their own off-grid system. And then they
| could sell to existing customers for slightly less than
| before, due to scale and an overall reduction of peak-to-
| baseline ratio.
|
| But I guess this isn't how the world works.
| fwip wrote:
| There's also the supply/demand aspect of it. Some
| electricity is cheaper to provide than others - the
| cheapest is the renewable or nuclear that's already built
| in the area, but when demand is high, the grid provider
| will source electricity from more expensive sources - coal,
| natural gas, or importing it from neighboring utilities.
| So, using some made-up numbers, if your existing cost for
| 100MW is $0.10/Wh, getting the next 100MW might cost
| $0.50/Wh, bumping the cost for everyone up to $0.30/Wh.
| saltyoldman wrote:
| KWh, but yes. I'm in CA so we don't have data centers
| because the cost of a Kwh is already like $123134^100
| taeric wrote:
| A lot of the increase in bills people are seeing come from
| necessary upgrades to the distribution infrastructure.
| Something that was going to be happening anyway.
| ikiris wrote:
| Power doesn't just apperate out of thin air. It has to be
| generated and that has costs. If suddenly the grid draws
| more power then more costly sources have to feed it.
| Everyone pays for the same power.
|
| The big consumer also buys in bulk and negotiates better
| rates etc.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| As you say, it's because the connection between the
| increased load and the factors requiring additional
| spending are at enough of a distance that they're hard to
| account for. If the datacenter operator argues (often with
| support from the power company, who has to convince
| government officials their rate increase is OK) that most
| of the grid upgrades were going to happen regardless and
| they've already paid for the increase fairly attributed to
| their operations, how can you really know whether that's
| true?
| phil21 wrote:
| It's due to lack of investment in the power grid on a
| generational timeline. We used up every bit of slack and
| extra capacity in the name of efficiency and not needing to
| spend the money on building stuff.
|
| It's also nearly impossible to build large-scale things
| like long distance transmission lines - so even stuff like
| solar fields and wind farms are difficult to make pencil
| out these days. You are talking a decade or more to get
| anything big done, if you are lucky.
|
| We ran out of parlour tricks like trying to game efficiency
| and curtail residential usage. We also ran out of industry
| to offshore. This was coming for us either way, just AI
| datacenter buildouts were unexpected and pulled demand
| forward some odd number of years.
|
| I was always planning on building an off-grid power setup
| for exactly this reason - the writing was on the wall
| decades ago. It just came a bit sooner than I expected!
|
| A large industrial scale power user that operates at
| roughly the same base power load 24x7 is an absolute dream
| customer for a grid operator. The fact we can't make the
| perfect customer profile pencil out without raising rates
| should be a giant huge red flashing warning sign with bells
| going off to everyone. Heck, these facilities can even
| typically participate in demand shedding programs on top of
| being ideal.
|
| We've been living off the cheap power our grandparents
| invested in building for us. Time has come to pay the
| piper.
| bilekas wrote:
| > What do you mean, "allowed" to vote on it? The county
| officials are the decisionmakers, who should have allowed or
| not allowed them?
|
| Well I'm not sure how it works there but there are requests
| here made before building can start. Planning permission is
| usually first voted on by committee and then brought to the
| public in the area and public forums are where people get to
| ask questions such as "what's the expected noise pollution".
| Basic stuff I thought.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The article details why it wasn't so basic here. Loudoun
| County allows datacenters to be built by right without a
| hearing, because they were understood to be (and IME still
| usually are) very low-impact on the neighbors. The gas
| turbines were approved as a temporary power source, but
| then the local power company Dominion said "temporary"
| would have to last for years longer than planned. Now
| they're changing the rules for datacenter approvals to
| ensure that projects that might end up producing this kind
| of impact will get the scrutiny they need.
| mindslight wrote:
| The fundamental problem is that adjusting the regulations
| for new operations still delivers no equitable relief for
| people around the site that was let through. An
| industrial operation shouldn't get an indefinite pass of
| grandfathered use for finding tricks in the current
| regulations. Rather the turbines should be shut down in
| short order (~weeks), and then owners can figure out how
| to proceed with the foreseeable contingency - wait for
| the grid operator (or properly incentivize them), deploy
| their own solar and batteries or some other type of power
| generation that doesn't produce noise and air pollution
| externalities, and so on.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The article says that Michael Turner, the vice chair of
| the county's government, doesn't believe they were trying
| to find tricks or deceive anyone. That makes it a lot
| harder to justify shutting them down. And potentially
| quite expensive, if they or their users can argue the
| county is liable for the costs.
|
| You mention properly incentivizing the grid operator, but
| this is also not so simple. As Dominion describes in
| their FAQ (https://www.dominionenergy.com/virginia/large-
| business-servi...), providing power to a large datacenter
| is itself a substantial construction project, requiring
| its own permits and specialized components. It's not just
| a matter of paying enough to get some guys working
| overtime.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _doesn 't believe they were trying to find tricks or
| deceive anyone_
|
| Talking about motivations would seem to be a smokescreen,
| a politician still trying to grease the wheels to allow
| the project to continue despite the harm to local
| residents. The point is that any engineer overseeing the
| deployment of turbines would have said "these things are
| loud" - it's an externality eminently foreseeable by the
| owner.
|
| And yes, my point is that the theories of liability that
| would make the county liable for any of these costs need
| to be drastically curtailed. The responsibility for a
| datacenter owner trying to force their externalities onto
| existing land uses and failing should rest on the
| datacenter owner, not on the people whom they attempted
| to harm.
| phil21 wrote:
| Yes, we should definitely increase NIMBY regulation by
| retroactively changing the rules on industrial
| development. The US is doing such a great job at building
| such projects already.
|
| No thanks. Instead lets fix our inability to build a
| thing in this country by reducing NIMBY regulation so
| things like power generation can be built where it makes
| sense, and we are allowed to do things like build long
| distance transmission lines again. Also start funding
| these societal-level projects like our grandparents and
| great grandparents did to invest in our futures.
|
| No datacenter operator wants to deploy their own power
| plants. It's due to the inability for anyone to get
| anything done that is not directly under their control.
| You would be waiting decades for projects to happen
| otherwise, like many have. Utilities have abdicated their
| responsibility to build for the future, and regulators
| have let them. Just like anything infrastructure related
| in the country. You are now seeing the direct impacts of
| this, and they will continue to increase regardless of if
| the cause is AI datacenters or whatever other popular
| thing we want to argue about next.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Bending over backwards and giving zero tax rates will sure
| make our area prosper! It has never worked before, but this
| time, maybe it will!!
| phil21 wrote:
| Pretty sure Northern VA (datacenter alley) is doing
| pretty great?
|
| Doubt they had to bend over backwards. This is one of
| dozens (hundreds now?) datacenters in the area.
|
| The difference these days is that they now come with
| power plants in the parking lot. Otherwise they tend to
| be pretty quiet all things considered other than when
| backup generators are fired up during testing or power
| outages.
|
| Cooling can be moderately loud, but the noise rapidly
| drops off with distance.
| squibonpig wrote:
| There's an assumption underlying what you said that
| datacenters are gonna get built one way or another. But these
| aren't sewage plants or power plants or desalination plants
| or whatever, they aren't particularly important for the
| quality of life of most people. We could just kinda... not
| build them? How about we don't let them get built most places
| so it becomes fairly expensive. Make it so expensive that
| only say 1/5 of the amount get built. The rich techbros still
| have their videogen toys and nobody deals with noise
| pollution. It's not cheap to generate a picture of trump
| riding a frog, ya know, but like everyone's lives are no
| different from how they are now.
| zardo wrote:
| Especially when we're talking about datacenters with onsite
| fossil fuel power generation.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't assume that! There's nothing wrong with a local
| government deciding that they just don't like big projects
| and won't approve any that aren't strictly necessary for
| the needs of local residents.
|
| The flip side is that residents of a place where people
| want to do more business and make big investments will have
| a lot more economic opportunity, which _is_ important to
| quality of life. So unless you 're in an area where people
| feel they already have all the opportunity they need,
| figuring out how to get businesses investing in your
| community in some way is important. And datacenters are
| often more pleasant to have nearby than warehouses or
| manufacturing.
| saltyoldman wrote:
| My wife and I travel in our RV a lot and used to full time.
| Some RV parks - even when full - are often totally quiet and
| peaceful at least enough to not notice a slight background
| noise of cars driving around here and there.
|
| Then a family will arrive that seems like they're at a Disney
| theme park and you just hear screaming kids non-stop. It's like
| a tornado is hitting for days. We always joke if you ask a
| tornado if it's quiet it will answer of course- I don't hear
| anything. Because there is NOTHING louder than the tornado and
| that's all it knows.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Or they don't see the problem. Someone's paying 600-900k to
| live in a townhouse 1000 ft from the runways at Dulles Airport
|
| https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/?category=SEMANTIC&sea...
| thepryz wrote:
| Reminds me of former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner's
| suggestion that deaf people buy homes near the airport.
|
| https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19941105/1939991/oh.
| ..
| sophrosyne42 wrote:
| A consequence on our focus on legislation rather than the more
| natural legal apths of addressing these problems, e.g.
| easements and tort law.
| anakaine wrote:
| Towards the end of the article:
|
| > "It was only after the data center was operating, following a
| tour he took of the facility, that Turner said county officials
| realized the data center was "running in island mode."
|
| > "It was very impressive, but it was obvious that this is not
| what we thought was allowed," Turner said."
|
| Youve stated its corruption by officials. Its rather clear,
| however, that when the company were told that a grid connection
| would take 3 years that they found a way around it that didnt
| require further approvals.
|
| Conspiracy theories are fun, but this isnt one.
| SayThatSh wrote:
| I've seen a few videos with the audible whine heard from people's
| houses even super far away from these datacenters. Guess we'll
| see in a few years whether they were worth building in the first
| place or whether they end up abandoned once the bubble bursts.
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| I assume once the bubble bursts they'll be turned into power
| supplies for bitcoin miners
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Hopefully not, but they expect that scenario. For those as
| ignorant as me, I started reading this
| https://cointelegraph.com/features/the-last-bitcoin-btc-mine
|
| They expect transaction fees will overtake minting earnings.
| thepryz wrote:
| I saw more than one video about datacenter noise that were
| clearly crypto mining. There are some questionable designs
| leveraging shipping containers and what sound like a lot of
| 120mm fans.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| These AI datacenters generally have invested quite a lot in
| Nvidia Chips and completely high end hardware by having DDR5
| Chips etc.
|
| And even more than that, the largest things for these things is
| how to supply enough water properly and water-cooling systems
| which aren't required in traditional systems.
|
| They also are very conditional and spike the grid up and down
| with their use cases slowing the grid.
|
| If the bubble bursts, which it will, It's hard to justify the
| billions of dollars spent on AI specific datacenters for
| essentially the bricks and mortars. I don't think that its very
| sound decision that they were worth building, it might make
| some compensation but not enough, in my opinion.
| ianschmitz wrote:
| Great video from Benn Jordan on data center noise causing illness
| to nearby residents: https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo
| fedreg wrote:
| wow, super interesting. thx for sharing!
| jmugan wrote:
| I feel like the world needs more sound engineers. There's a
| constant humming of the machines and we all suffer for it. We
| also need more vigilance about preventing noise pollution. The
| beep, beep, beep may make a company feel like it is doing
| something for safety, but there is no counterforce that they have
| to answer to about what they are doing to everyone else not
| involved. (I know there is a better sound to replace beep beep
| beep but it hasn't made it to my neighborhood yet)
| hunter2_ wrote:
| We would need to figure out a quantifiable metric for annoyance
| level. Municipal sound ordinances do tend to correctly utilize
| SPL(A) and SPL(C), with A-weighting being relevant for safety
| against ear injury (low frequencies have less influence) and
| C-weighting being relevant for annoyance level (low frequencies
| have more influence), but this isn't nearly enough. For
| example, ordinances carve out additional tolerance for
| burstiness, which makes sense for rare events like
| jackhammering but not for common events like routine plant
| operations. Sound with lots of harmonic content (think
| distortion) is more annoying than without. High frequencies can
| be worse if they reach you, but they're less likely to reach
| you (approaching a need for line-of-sight). It's complicated.
|
| Here's a free idea for someone to run with: just as Zillow has
| a neighborhood "walkability" score prospective buyers might
| look at, there could be various pollution scores, including
| sound and light, sourced from some kind of Flock-like (ew)
| network of capture devices. Some folks are into mounting things
| like personal weather stations on their property, so maybe a
| new generation of devices capturing this type of data (with
| local signature-based identification of sources, and
| triangulation when the same thing is heard in multiple places,
| etc.) wouldn't be too far-fetched.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The constant humming that causes the overwhelming population-
| weighted noise pollution comes from cars and airplanes, due to
| the fact that in America it is currently not legal to build an
| apartment except within 100ft of a freeway or at the ends of
| airports.
| saltyoldman wrote:
| That gave me a chuckle
| jerlam wrote:
| It's the Simpsons "Everything's OK" alarm: (note: loud and
| annoying noise) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxNp3bUDtxY
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| They could start with building codes. State of the art,
| beautiful new designs where you can hear every word of the
| meeting next door.
| avidiax wrote:
| All the sound engineers in the world can't fix "don't care" and
| "want to".
|
| A modern US city has the combined problems of cheap
| construction of residential buildings, with insufficient unit-
| to-unit and exterior noise isolation (builders "don't care"),
| and near-zero enforcement of vehicle noise laws (police and
| muffler shops "don't care", drivers "want to" be loud).
|
| Contrast this with, say, Germany or Switzerland, where concrete
| construction is the norm, noise laws are often strictly
| enforced, and a modified car would get pulled over quickly.
| creddit wrote:
| The aerial photo in the article makes the whole thing a little
| funny to me.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Sane municipalities, counties, and states have noise restrictions
| for power generation equipment, most of the AHJs in my metro area
| require no more than 60dB of noise from 100' away for a
| generator, that would easily prevent gas turbines from operating.
|
| It's common enough that generator manufacturers make different
| levels of enclosures to comply with noise regulations.
|
| It's likely impossible to use gas turbines to generate power in
| my state unless they're very far away from anyone, rules linked
| below. The only type of land with no noise restrictions is
| undeveloped land, so you can operate forestry equipment but not
| gas turbines.
|
| States that allow gas turbines anywhere near their residents
| homes does not give a shit about them, probably it's a perfect
| circle venn diagram with states that reject expanded Medicare
| funding.
|
| https://www.pca.state.mn.us/sites/default/files/p-gen6-01.pd...
| rayiner wrote:
| > States that allow gas turbines anywhere near their residents
| homes does not give a shit about them, probably it's a perfect
| circle venn diagram with states that reject expanded Medicare
| funding.
|
| That's a weird thing to say given the story is about Virginia.
| clcaev wrote:
| There are all kinds of externalities that we fail to accommodate
| in our market pricing.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The article very very carefully avoids contextualizing this site,
| so as a service, here you go:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sully+Rd,+Centreville,+VA/...
| toofso wrote:
| interesting that the data center noise is competing with a lot
| of airplanes and freeways
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Genuine question but is the problem datacenters or more
| specifically AI specific datacenters?
|
| Because all these talks of data-center disrupting everyday's life
| from all the videos I have watched somehow now involve the AI/GPU
| aspect which have definitely made things more energy intensive
| and more water intensive
|
| But more specifically compute focused datacenters actually feel
| somewhat good/neutral to the region and you still need remote
| hands etc. so net employment.
|
| Although one of the ideas I have with that is it would be better
| if the owner of the said datacenter either belonged to the
| community/cared about it and wasn't a massive corporation for
| example too.
|
| It's the AI bubble which is the issue which has caused a
| Datacenter frenzy as nameless corporations take massive debts to
| build them and scramble to do so and cause issues in the process.
| squibonpig wrote:
| Vast majority of the new ones are for AI
| downrightmike wrote:
| The only thing Microslop's CEO cares about is that he can't
| get enough buildings to fill with machines
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| In this case it is mostly the gas plants. They could have
| installed them far away, keeping the datacenter in place, or
| even better, use solar power. Or they could have built
| infrastructure in the middle of nowhere for datacenters to
| reside. In the end the problem is that maximum profit doesn't
| care about humans.
| hettygreen wrote:
| Can anyone provide a breakdown for what all these new data
| centers are used for?
|
| Is this storage? If so, storing what?
|
| Is this for AI/processing? If so, doing what?
| gib444 wrote:
| Low-frequency noise is insidious and an assault on your sanity.
| Wind turbines are bad for it. And hea_t pump$ to a lesser extent.
|
| Blocking low-frequency noise requires very heavy, well-designed
| construction, and retrofitting a typical dwelling to achieve
| large reductions is difficult and expensive.
|
| This means all the blame goes onto the perpetrators - the
| developers, the politicians - because for all intents and
| purposes, residents can't do anything to stop it.
| fudged71 wrote:
| This just happened up north, apparently the largest proposed AI
| data center in Canada (Synapse's $10B 1GW campus in Olds,
| Alberta) was just put on pause after the Utilities Commission
| rejected its power application on March 6, 2026 due to noise
| pollution concerns from 20 gas turbines, 10 steam generators, and
| up to 600 diesel backups near 800 homes (just 200m away). The
| assessments failed to model cumulative worst-case noise. The
| proposal will be revised and resubmitted of course but the
| concern isn't going to go away.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Seriously, why do they have to build a DC 200m from homes? Is
| Alberta out of space?
| bravetraveler wrote:
| I offer you a chatbot in this troubling time
| krunck wrote:
| Person who probably has never lived next to an industrial site
| disappointed to find they don't like living next to an industrial
| site.
|
| This is why we have zoning laws.
| seven0444494 wrote:
| the comments here are better than the article lol
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha this is because of the on site gas turbines because we've
| decided that any power infrastructure is evil. You gotta love the
| NDFA that is the market finding the gaps in law to reach utility.
|
| I live near a datacenter myself in San Francisco. No problems
| here.
| ratg13 wrote:
| Gas turbines emit an array of pollutants including nitrogen
| oxides, methane, carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, and
| formaldehyde that you should not be breathing.
|
| You might not feel it right away, but the closer you are to
| these things, the more your health is going to suffer over
| time.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Person in sacrifice zone, sees no problems.
| bluepuma77 wrote:
| The US seems like a pretty huge area for the number of people
| living there. Why do they need to build a data center 100m from a
| house, why not build it 1000m away?
| downrightmike wrote:
| utilities cost more to run further
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