Comment by amluto
1 hour ago
I’m sure there is real data and real math available.
For heating: imagine a 1km^2 campus. That’s 1e6 m^2, and peak daylight is around 1kW/m^2. So peak daylight on the campus is about 1GW. (Wow, just covering the whole campus with solar panels would be pretty awesome!) If you put a 1GW datacenter there, that is equivalent to full daylight, with zero albedo, 24/7. Hmm, I’d rather live at a considerable distance from just the dissipated heat.
As for noise, there is no substantial noise emission inherent to the operation, so I expect it largely comes down to how hard the facility tries to mitigate accidental noise and how well local regulators enforce sound measurement and control. Consider a high-end Noctua or similar fan, compared to a super cheap fan of comparable RPM, flow, and static pressure — a 30dB difference in emitted sound is entirely plausible. The datacenter has some switching noise from handling its 1GW of power, but it also has lots and lots of fans and pumps.
An LLM informs me that 1kW of acoustic energy radiated into free air (no surfaces) is 79dB SPL, Z curve (unweighted), at a range of 1km. So if 1 part per million of the datacenter’s power consumption ends up as noise, it’s loud. There are all manner of corrections needed. For example, your ears’ sensitivity is much lower at non-peak-sensitivity frequencies. But the data center isn’t in free air, and the effect of the ground, the atmosphere under appropriate circumstances, and the height of the datacenter could easily dramatically increase the intensity at longish distances.
A lot of this boils down to large datacenters using immense amounts of power and that power being something you would prefer not to have redirected at you in any form.
> If you put a 1GW datacenter there, that is equivalent to full daylight, with zero albedo, 24/7. Hmm, I’d rather live at a considerable distance from just the dissipated heat.
Doesn't this comparison fall apart when you consider that the heat is going to be dissipated across a large area? The reason why stuff gets so hot during the day is that the surrounding areas also get heated, so there's nowhere for the heat to escape other than up. If only 1sq km is getting heated, and that's getting dissipated, the effect is going to be far less than your implied comparison of 2 suns. To bring it back to your example, a patch of payment in the sun (ie. 1kW/m^2) can get scorching hot. But in absolute terms it's less than the output of a space heater (typical one is 1.5KW), not even enough to keep a room warm.
Yes, absolutely, but it will depend on where one is, the surrounding geography, etc.
A hairdryer pointed at me from 1m away running 24/7 will make me notably warmer. A hairdryer 20m away is probably unnoticeable. A 1GW datacenter is a lot of hairdryers. At some scale, there is probably a buoyancy effect such that cooler air will be drawn in near the surface, get heated, and convect upwards, so I could even believe that a monster datacenter would cool some surrounding areas. (The sun inland from the west coast in the US has this effect during certain seasons, and AIUI this is a good part of the reason that the areas very near the coast tend to be dramatically cooler than inland areas in the spring and early summer.)