There’s a wind farm near my house and I suppose they do make sound although the only time I was ever able to hear it was during the height of the lockdowns because there’s a massive highway between me and them and that’s definitely louder. They definitely don’t produce infrared sound though, but way too big and the blades move way too slowly.
It does matter if the complaints are real or fabricated, turns out. Research on that topic confirmed that wind turbines generate very little infrasound, further reduced by their great distance from the ground. The amounts in question are less than that generated by other ubiquitous machines, so it is very safe to conclude that those complaints are phony, advanced by enemies of alternative energy.
I can’t speak to the validity of these complaints, but there are a lot more motors running a lot faster in a data center than in a wind power generator, so it is at least plausible. The research will demonstrate if this complaint is valid or just more activism.
Just looked up, a windturbine has less infrasound then cars. (german Source) I would guess the datacenter could have more infrasound and thus be a bigger problem. They mention a study about windturbine infrasound and they point towards nocebo effect, but maybe windturbines are at a border where the health effects are very difficult to measure. So maybe studies about the infrasound of datacenters could find something. On the other hand, datacenters bring a lot more pollution factors, like light-, air- and waterpollution.
I dislike hypocrisy as much as the next person. So I feel where you’re coming from. At the same time, the wind turbines are generating power that everyone benefits from, whereas these things are consuming power for a product that very few people actually like or even want to exist. So I think its fair to say that maybe the noise is tolerable when you’re getting something you actually want out of it. Also, wind farms are usually built further away from large population centers, whereas data centers are because it’s cheaper to build them in areas with lots of people around. So the concern does seem a little more irrelevant to wind farming as a whole than data centers.
Just out of curiosity, what makes them cheaper to build in populated areas? Doesn’t that mean the land value is higher when purchasing/leasing the site?
The article alludes to it: “The United States does not lack flat, open land away from population centers on which to build data centers. However, AI hyperscalers prefer to locate their campuses near existing infrastructure so they don’t have to spend massive amounts of time and resources building everything from scratch.”
It costs a lotta money to run electricity and water to the middle of nowhere.
Also, companies are doing research to specifically build in areas where they believe the local community is not politically empowered to prevent it from being built. This guy goes into some more depth at this timestamp: https://youtu.be/1CpVmPh3BDE?t=831
I remember when people complained about sound coming from wind turbines. That was bad
This? Good
There’s a wind farm near my house and I suppose they do make sound although the only time I was ever able to hear it was during the height of the lockdowns because there’s a massive highway between me and them and that’s definitely louder. They definitely don’t produce infrared sound though, but way too big and the blades move way too slowly.
It does matter if the complaints are real or fabricated, turns out. Research on that topic confirmed that wind turbines generate very little infrasound, further reduced by their great distance from the ground. The amounts in question are less than that generated by other ubiquitous machines, so it is very safe to conclude that those complaints are phony, advanced by enemies of alternative energy.
I can’t speak to the validity of these complaints, but there are a lot more motors running a lot faster in a data center than in a wind power generator, so it is at least plausible. The research will demonstrate if this complaint is valid or just more activism.
Just looked up, a windturbine has less infrasound then cars. (german Source) I would guess the datacenter could have more infrasound and thus be a bigger problem. They mention a study about windturbine infrasound and they point towards nocebo effect, but maybe windturbines are at a border where the health effects are very difficult to measure. So maybe studies about the infrasound of datacenters could find something. On the other hand, datacenters bring a lot more pollution factors, like light-, air- and waterpollution.
I dislike hypocrisy as much as the next person. So I feel where you’re coming from. At the same time, the wind turbines are generating power that everyone benefits from, whereas these things are consuming power for a product that very few people actually like or even want to exist. So I think its fair to say that maybe the noise is tolerable when you’re getting something you actually want out of it. Also, wind farms are usually built further away from large population centers, whereas data centers are because it’s cheaper to build them in areas with lots of people around. So the concern does seem a little more irrelevant to wind farming as a whole than data centers.
Just out of curiosity, what makes them cheaper to build in populated areas? Doesn’t that mean the land value is higher when purchasing/leasing the site?
The article alludes to it: “The United States does not lack flat, open land away from population centers on which to build data centers. However, AI hyperscalers prefer to locate their campuses near existing infrastructure so they don’t have to spend massive amounts of time and resources building everything from scratch.”
It costs a lotta money to run electricity and water to the middle of nowhere.
Also, companies are doing research to specifically build in areas where they believe the local community is not politically empowered to prevent it from being built. This guy goes into some more depth at this timestamp: https://youtu.be/1CpVmPh3BDE?t=831
Fascinating thank you. Brings me back to ArcMap training days. I wonder if they have some data layer for “local population acceptance factor”.
I’m sure they do. Probably using an AI model to calculate it tbh