Several Mississippi homes have been purchased near datacenters and one resident said realtor outlined target to buy more than 400
People in a Mississippi neighborhood, many of whom dislike a nearby power plant central to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence ambitions, have received a stark offer – to sell their houses to his company and make way.
Real estate agents have been going door to door in Southaven, Mississippi, on behalf of xAI, Musk’s AI company that was folded into the SpaceX entity in February, touting a deal to purchase houses as long as the owners agree to not join a lawsuit against the company over the power plant’s noise.
This plan could potentially swallow up almost the entire neighborhood of Colonial Hills, on the western flank of Southaven. A realtor told one resident there is a target to purchase 418 homes, with 18 homeowners already agreeing to sell, according to a recording of a conversation heard by the Guardian. xAI did not respond to questions over these numbers and its plans for the neighborhood and has previously said it intends to be be a good neighbor; it denies all claims in the noise lawsuit.
They could make these data centers quieter using ground source heat pumps, they could also build up solar farms to power them.
But they won’t do that unless they are forced to.
It’s not unreasonable to insist that companies be good neighbors. Especially when those companies are in the business of taking your jobs away and creating a surveillance state.
They could also put them further out away from existing homes. This doesn’t solve the noise issue in the environment, but it does solve the human neighbors complaining.
Exactly. The only reason corporations stopped dumping cadmium in the water is because they were forced to under threat of prosecution.
Building solar farms and batteries to make these massive DCs fully renewable isnt practical unfortunately.
We’re talking bigger than the biggest one ever made in the USA by multiples to keep the power on 24/7, the size of Austin and maybe bigger, with a battery farm dwarfing even that in scale (not land size, but ever built).
They should still try to make as much of it solar, but ultimately its going to need a grid connect or alternative source at the same power for when the sun is down as these things always run near peak.
Edit: this is really what nuclear is perfect for. Constant high baseload.
Edit: limiting peak loads to sun times could help, but something like that would require legislation as thats downtime on deprecating hardware.
It’s practical, and much cheaper/quicker power, but they need to move further out, and lose the water supply for “modern” datacenters, and fiber connections require longer lines. Using more land solves all noise issues for any neighbours as well.
See, you don’t really get the scale. It’s not practical, the land size where it needs to be would be immense, and all the numbers below get worse as you go north. This would be around Texas.
These things would need to run in the winter when the output is worst. You would need approximately 7GW of solar to power a 1GW datacenter and charge the batteries to run on off sun hours. That battery would need to be 16 GWh.
Except, that’s perfect winter weather. It’s not always perfect winter weather, it needs a buffer, likely at least 1+ day of buffer for when there is no sun, so thats another 24GWh of battery, and that 24GWh of battery needs another 7-10GW of solar to keep it topped up appropriately.
So
23-2614-17 GW of solar and 40GWh of battery and you can have some bad solar days with a complete 1 day backup if everything is taken offline, but you really think they would build something like this completely off grid that only has 1 day of backup?That’s 14-17 times the largest solar field active in the USA today, and 13 times the largest battery.
Getting all that space, permitting it all etc would take years on it’s own.
Thats why they’re all doing gas turbines. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like it, but it’s definitely easier and quicker than something on the scale what would be required with solar. Long term yes the solar/batteries would be cheaper.
Edit: i fail at addition and addrd storage and solar for the solar. 7GW + 7-10GW is not 23 to 26. So itd be 14 to 17x not 23-26x.
The 3 strategies if not sharing electricity is overproduction in summer used to make/sell H2 from surplus, and backup energy in winter (can come from H2/ammonia), and throttling down usage on some winter days.
That first strategy (overproduction) is helped with any size wire for export/import. Southern US has less seasonal production variation than north, but the solar sizing formula is based on maximum summer production day. (datacenter + electrolysis gw * 24) / maximum sun hours. Very heavy electrolysis permits free power for one datacenter, and high power ROI for providing power to an equal 2nd datacenter. Reason is simply that electrolysis power sink costs $300/kw, while datacenter power sink is $50k/kw.
The trick is to go much huger than your suggestion. Massive batteries support either longer H2 electrolysis use in summer, or night/duck curve electricity delivery. Unilike utility hookups, transformer capacity, solar and batteries, with Chinese supply chain that can include domestic manufacturing is a quick/solved high capacity/quick development path. Solar, batteries, electrolysis can be deployed in 100s of mw per month that match gpu installations instead of a monolitic power plant.
Some models for Nebraska and Phoenix: https://lemmy.ca/post/63402719
But they won’t do that unless they are forced to.
They won’t do that even if they are forced to. dickMusk and his ilk only answer to the oil barrons.
The more people agree to sell on this…
The more everyone else gets from the lawsuit. And the way these always work, is every round of offers increases. One lone holdout can end up getting as much as the first 100 who sold combined.
Even just for purely selfish reasons, taking the initial offer is the dumbest thing you can do
Easy to say when it’s not your home that you’re living in and attempting to raise a family in. It’s not your time and mental and emotional energy being absorbed by lawsuits and no doubt threats by these large companies.
I totally agree with you, but unfortunately standing up for rights, even your own rights, can be more costly than it would be worth to you personally. We as a society greatly benefit when people are willing to take up the fight, but it’s not always easy.
No SpaceX had been pretty consistently low balling all the people forced out of boca chica and paying them but not enough to get a similar house in a new location with costs rising.
And the way these always work, is every round of offers increases. One lone holdout can end up getting as much as the first 100 who sold combined.
I mean…
I thought it was pretty clear that starts with lowball offers…
But that’s just me overestimating people again
Why is noise mitigation not the first solution? Surely they aren’t permitted to make so much noise with residents nearby. You shouldn’t have to be coerced into selling while giving up the right to sue for something they aren’t allowed to do.
Because there are more than permitted running and walls don’t block that deep low vibration humming very well.
Enjoy the bad air quality too, what a travesty all for greed and love of money. Enjoy!
They are selling their house, so that means they are leaving right?
Take the deal 🤷♂️
I’m all for giving up “your” land for the greater good, like for railroads, but this is Elon mf Musk wanting to build more AI child porn factories, so no, don’t ever give him anything for any price
Easy for you to say, you’re not near it getting migraines from the noise. But yeah, they should suffer while you don’t kill musk.
As though it’s trivial to uproot your life and potentially leave a family home. No regard for nearby work, school, friends, or family.
How about the company does what it should be doing and obeys the law. I understand if people want to or do end up taking the deal, but acting like that is a viable solution to a business flagrantly violating the law is a clear misunderstanding of the entire point of laws.
companies haven’t obeyed laws for millennia. I don’t see society getting better anymore. Global human peak. So I think the best thing anyone in their situation can do is take the deal, and use that to improve their own lives as much as they can.
Because we know damn well no one will take the money, buy a gun, and remove the billionaires from existence.
Toss sugar in the concrete during construction. Much simpler.
Data centers also need Air Conditioning. I hear AC units don’t like Cocktails.
