Comment by ndriscoll
18 hours ago
The referenced 169 MW location is literally across the street from a residential neighborhood, where the article indicates they measured temperature differences[0].
> This gap is significant because many facilities are sited adjacent to residential neighborhoods (Fig. 1), and their air-cooled condenser arrays discharge air at temperatures 8–14 °C above ambient—often exceeding 50 °C during Phoenix summers—with air velocities of 2–4 m/s [15,16], creating thermal plumes that are advected downwind over inhabited areas. For example, the Iron Mountain Data Center (Fig. 1(c)) has cooling equipment located less than 50 m from the nearest three-story apartment building.
[0] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/33.267398/-111.880313
I wonder why the local government allowed it to be built without a buffer zone.
Well historically it meant that's where poor black families lived, but since these days the lower end of the 1% have more in common with the poorest of the poor than the richest of the rich it's probably where mere millionaires live.