I remember the lololds being so upset the gays were going to be allowed to get married. They said it was a slippery slope. Now 1/2 the country can't define what a woman is.

Texas wants to give the county permitting authority over data centers. Small counties most likely can't afford to staff a proper office to approve these permits.

Well funded counties will use these laws to over-regulate everything. Look no further than your closest liberal ****hole to see how great government is at screwing up everything from zoning to affordable housing.

Def agree but I'm actually much more concerned about the immediate problem which is Texas getting plastered over with hyperscale data centers.

I'll be keeping an eye on this for morbid curiosity. I have cousins that just sold a ton of acreage to a data center in East Bernard. And another family member trying to sell her land to another one in the same area. Wharton county is pretty small and that area isn't meant for heavy traffic and has no power infrastructure at that scale.

They seem to be concentrated out west where the power is wind turbines or Permian basin gas., it's actually cost effective in that way as long as the power source of choice does not require much water cooling, or they don't mind operating at variable capacity based on availability of wind power.

Quote:

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Texas wants to give the county permitting authority over data centers. Small counties most likely can't afford to staff a proper office to approve these permits.

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Where are you getting that? The Legislature won't be in session again until next year, so nothing is imminent.

But, where counties already get involved is that most of these data centers ask for tax abatement agreements. Without one, they don't get built, so the local tax authorities already have the vehicle for a big say on where they get built, if they want to use it.

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Wharton county is pretty small and that area isn't meant for heavy traffic and has no power infrastructure at that scale.

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Yeah, I can see East Bernard being overrun quickly. The RV parks will be full, maybe even the TeePee motel (if it hasn't closed again)

I read that these data centers average hundreds of thousands of square feet and consume the same power as tens of thousands of homes.

I agree with over-regulation being a concern, but it seems reasonable that the county should have some level of say over such massive structures.

MouthBQ98 said:

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They seem to be concentrated out west where the power is wind turbines or Permian basin gas., it's actually cost effective in that way as long as the power source of choice does not require much water cooling, or they don't mind operating at variable capacity based on availability of wind power.

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There are a lot coming to central Texas in the near future as well.

Rubicante said:

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I read that these data centers average hundreds of thousands of square feet and consume the same power as tens of thousands of homes.

I agree with over-regulation being a concern, but it seems reasonable that the county should have some level of say over such massive structures.

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Several of the ones I have seen can't get electricity delivered fast enough, but their sites are served by natural gas companies that are more than happy to provide service. In these cases, the developers are building their own natural gas powered electrical plants to meet their energy needs. That should be giving our resident O&G Drill Here Drill Now crowd a chubby.

Wildmen03 said:

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I'll be keeping an eye on this for morbid curiosity. I have cousins that just sold a ton of acreage to a data center in East Bernard. And another family member trying to sell her land to another one in the same area. Wharton county is pretty small and that area isn't meant for heavy traffic and has no power infrastructure at that scale.

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Data Center and East Bernard in the same sentence. Never thought I'd hear that.

Funny aside - If you've got cousins in East Bernard and are a BQ, we definitely know people in common. Mostly Street Fighters though.

twk said:

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Quote:

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Texas wants to give the county permitting authority over data centers. Small counties most likely can't afford to staff a proper office to approve these permits.

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Where are you getting that? The Legislature won't be in session again until next year, so nothing is imminent.

But, where counties already get involved is that most of these data centers ask for tax abatement agreements. Without one, they don't get built, so the local tax authorities already have the vehicle for a big say on where they get built, if they want to use it.

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They may or may not be asking for tax abatements, but in some counties (one I know of for sure because my buddy, an Ag, is the county judge) the projected tax rate for EVERYONE will go down SIGNIFICANTLY once the center is built and online. Further, obviously not in all places but in some, where they get built is a function of where they can get the land.

Every deal/county may be different.

But think about the regulation you have to deal with in a municipality: everything from a CO all the way down to parking spaces. That goes away outside the city limits. Plus, with the upgraded transmission and bandwidth, its a win/win for the county.

MouthBQ98 said:

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They seem to be concentrated out west where the power is wind turbines or Permian basin gas., it's actually cost effective in that way as long as the power source of choice does not require much water cooling, or they don't mind operating at variable capacity based on availability of wind power.

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Before I left Australia, I did some work in a brand new data center which had a new concept of using ambient air for cooling. That was probably late 2019 and I left in early 2020 so I don't know how it panned out.

It was pretty damn cold in Melbourne every time I visited there so they might have had a chance. This was in a crappy little suburb south of the Melbourne Tullamarine Airport and well west of the CBD.

Found it. Equinix ME4 in Derrimut, Victoria, Australia.
They refer to it as "free air cooling"
https://www.equinix.com.br/content/dam/eqxcorp/en_us/documents/resources/ibx-tech-specs/ibx_me4_en.pdf

Fun fact, that day in 2019, I used the 4G on my phone to download an 8 GB .iso image file while sitting in the back of a taxi on my way to the data center.

Burdizzo said:

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MouthBQ98 said:

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They seem to be concentrated out west where the power is wind turbines or Permian basin gas., it's actually cost effective in that way as long as the power source of choice does not require much water cooling, or they don't mind operating at variable capacity based on availability of wind power.

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I have been involved in working with several utility companies that have been requested to provide services for these developments. My observation on the water side is that once you explain how tight water is or how politically difficult it is, they change their cooling schemes to reduce water demand considerably. Energy availability and access to fiber are bigger issues to them than cooling water, and all the hand-wringing over them using all the water in the state is overblown

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A good friend of mine is an engineer for Fidium and they just signed a datacenter for 4.8 tb/s bandwidth between Houston and Dallas. It's nuts.

Is this one of those things were the first generation of Data Centers will be 100X larger than the 10th generation? Kind of like all the computers at NASA in the 70's now fit inside an I phone type deal?

Yesterday said:

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Is this one of those things were the first generation of Data Centers will be 100X larger than the 10th generation? Kind of like all the computers at NASA in the 70's now fit inside an I phone type deal?

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I doubt it. Not anytime soon anyway. GPU form is down to 4nm now. Getting much smaller is proving difficult and AI DCs will still cram as much compute in the facilities as they can.

Maybe if quantum computing is ever figured out but I figure they'll just keep the same footprint and fill the space, multiplying their capacity.

Probably somewhat, but not really because Moore's Law that transistor count doubles every two years is hitting physical limitations.

All these issues aside, I'm not sure I want Texas to be the hometown of Skynet when the machines decide to take over.

91AggieLawyer said:

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twk said:

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Quote:

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Texas wants to give the county permitting authority over data centers. Small counties most likely can't afford to staff a proper office to approve these permits.

---

Where are you getting that? The Legislature won't be in session again until next year, so nothing is imminent.

But, where counties already get involved is that most of these data centers ask for tax abatement agreements. Without one, they don't get built, so the local tax authorities already have the vehicle for a big say on where they get built, if they want to use it.

---

They may or may not be asking for tax abatements, but in some counties (one I know of for sure because my buddy, an Ag, is the county judge) the projected tax rate for EVERYONE will go down SIGNIFICANTLY once the center is built and online. Further, obviously not in all places but in some, where they get built is a function of where they can get the land.

Every deal/county may be different.

But think about the regulation you have to deal with in a municipality: everything from a CO all the way down to parking spaces. That goes away outside the city limits. Plus, with the upgraded transmission and bandwidth, its a win/win for the county.

---

Yes, that's the thing people don't get about abatements. You can have a pasture that you get to tax at ag value and collect virtually nothing, or you can give the developer some small break and tax certainty by signing an abatement agreement and collect a lot more than the undeveloped pasture would generate. It's a win for local taxpayers.

Rubicante said:

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I read that these data centers average hundreds of thousands of square feet and consume the same power as tens of thousands of homes.

I agree with over-regulation being a concern, but it seems reasonable that the county should have some level of say over such massive structures.

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The demand on the grid isn't really a local question -- local governments don't run the grid. That's a question for the state and ERCOT.

It seems to me that they ought to be building these things in the Permian where you could take advantage of all that gas that is being flared off for lack of a market, build some more gas generation, and supply all the electricity you need for data centers. As Burdizzo pointed out, if you tell these developers that water scarcity is an issue, they will employ a closed loop design that uses no more water than a run of the mill commercial building of similar, or usually quite a bit smaller, size.

I'm guessing you don't own land near one of these monstrosities.

True Grid.

Burdizzo said:

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MouthBQ98 said:

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They seem to be concentrated out west where the power is wind turbines or Permian basin gas., it's actually cost effective in that way as long as the power source of choice does not require much water cooling, or they don't mind operating at variable capacity based on availability of wind power.

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I have been involved in working with several utility companies that have been requested to provide services for these developments. My observation on the water side is that once you explain how tight water is or how politically difficult it is, they change their cooling schemes to reduce water demand considerably. Energy availability and access to fiber are bigger issues to them than cooling water, and all the hand-wringing over them using all the water in the state is overblown

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I assume you mean they are going with closed water loops, which I think is a much better plan. However, before the reality of water scarcity hit them, it was much cheaper to use an open loop system.

From an environmental standpoint, it's better to burn the nat gas to power the closed loop than deplete more ground water in an already drying area.

CDUB98 said:

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Burdizzo said:

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MouthBQ98 said:

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They seem to be concentrated out west where the power is wind turbines or Permian basin gas., it's actually cost effective in that way as long as the power source of choice does not require much water cooling, or they don't mind operating at variable capacity based on availability of wind power.

---

I have been involved in working with several utility companies that have been requested to provide services for these developments. My observation on the water side is that once you explain how tight water is or how politically difficult it is, they change their cooling schemes to reduce water demand considerably. Energy availability and access to fiber are bigger issues to them than cooling water, and all the hand-wringing over them using all the water in the state is overblown

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I assume you mean they are going with closed water loops, which I think is a much better plan. However, before the reality of water scarcity hit them, it was much cheaper to use an open loop system.

From an environmental standpoint, it's better to burn the nat gas to power the closed loop than deplete more ground water in an already drying area.

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Open loop isn't just a water consumption equation. It is also a water disposal equation.

I ask because I don't know and have yet to see one in Texas, how many open loop cooling systems at data centers are there in Texas?

Nearly every hyperscale data center uses or will use closed loop cooling.

91AggieLawyer said:

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twk said:

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Quote:

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Texas wants to give the county permitting authority over data centers. Small counties most likely can't afford to staff a proper office to approve these permits.

---

Where are you getting that? The Legislature won't be in session again until next year, so nothing is imminent.

But, where counties already get involved is that most of these data centers ask for tax abatement agreements. Without one, they don't get built, so the local tax authorities already have the vehicle for a big say on where they get built, if they want to use it.

---

They may or may not be asking for tax abatements, but in some counties (one I know of for sure because my buddy, an Ag, is the county judge) the projected tax rate for EVERYONE will go down SIGNIFICANTLY once the center is built and online. Further, obviously not in all places but in some, where they get built is a function of where they can get the land.

Every deal/county may be different.

But think about the regulation you have to deal with in a municipality: everything from a CO all the way down to parking spaces. That goes away outside the city limits. Plus, with the upgraded transmission and bandwidth, its a win/win for the county.

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They are 100% asking for tax abatements, make no mistake about it.

And the tax RATE may drop, but the valuation that the tax rate is based on will absolutely increase. In no world are taxes actually going to drop, even with the slight of hand language being used.

schmellba99 said:

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Burdizzo said:

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MouthBQ98 said:

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They seem to be concentrated out west where the power is wind turbines or Permian basin gas., it's actually cost effective in that way as long as the power source of choice does not require much water cooling, or they don't mind operating at variable capacity based on availability of wind power.

---

I have been involved in working with several utility companies that have been requested to provide services for these developments. My observation on the water side is that once you explain how tight water is or how politically difficult it is, they change their cooling schemes to reduce water demand considerably. Energy availability and access to fiber are bigger issues to them than cooling water, and all the hand-wringing over them using all the water in the state is overblown

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That is 100% dependent on where in the state they are. Because central texas all the way down to Corpus right now has zero water to give.

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The data centers I have seen in this part of the state are proposing demands lower per acre than residential developments, FWIW. In other words a data center being built on a former farm/ranch of 500 acres is going to consume less water than a residential development going on the same spot. Granted, most NIMBYs don't like seeing either one get built, but the housing growth doesn't seem to be getting near the pushback.

twk said:

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91AggieLawyer said:

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twk said:

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Quote:

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Texas wants to give the county permitting authority over data centers. Small counties most likely can't afford to staff a proper office to approve these permits.

---

Where are you getting that? The Legislature won't be in session again until next year, so nothing is imminent.

But, where counties already get involved is that most of these data centers ask for tax abatement agreements. Without one, they don't get built, so the local tax authorities already have the vehicle for a big say on where they get built, if they want to use it.

---

They may or may not be asking for tax abatements, but in some counties (one I know of for sure because my buddy, an Ag, is the county judge) the projected tax rate for EVERYONE will go down SIGNIFICANTLY once the center is built and online. Further, obviously not in all places but in some, where they get built is a function of where they can get the land.

Every deal/county may be different.

But think about the regulation you have to deal with in a municipality: everything from a CO all the way down to parking spaces. That goes away outside the city limits. Plus, with the upgraded transmission and bandwidth, its a win/win for the county.

---

Yes, that's the thing people don't get about abatements. You can have a pasture that you get to tax at ag value and collect virtually nothing, or you can give the developer some small break and tax certainty by signing an abatement agreement and collect a lot more than the undeveloped pasture would generate. It's a win for local taxpayers.

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That is 100% debatable

Burdizzo said:

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schmellba99 said:

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Burdizzo said:

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MouthBQ98 said:

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They seem to be concentrated out west where the power is wind turbines or Permian basin gas., it's actually cost effective in that way as long as the power source of choice does not require much water cooling, or they don't mind operating at variable capacity based on availability of wind power.

---

I have been involved in working with several utility companies that have been requested to provide services for these developments. My observation on the water side is that once you explain how tight water is or how politically difficult it is, they change their cooling schemes to reduce water demand considerably. Energy availability and access to fiber are bigger issues to them than cooling water, and all the hand-wringing over them using all the water in the state is overblown

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That is 100% dependent on where in the state they are. Because central texas all the way down to Corpus right now has zero water to give.

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The data centers I have seen in this part of the state are proposing demands lower per acre than residential developments, FWIW. In other words a data center being built on a former farm/ranch of 500 acres is going to consume less water than a residential development going on the same spot. Granted, most NIMBYs don't like seeing either one get built, but the housing growth doesn't seem to be getting near the pushback.

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They do, but not to the degree that industrial type development gets pushback from. I think a lot of people are fatigued with wind farms, solar farms, data centers, etc.

And both of either a data center or a new master planned cookie cutter housing development use significantly more water than pasture or farmland.

CDUB98 said:

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Burdizzo said:

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MouthBQ98 said:

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They seem to be concentrated out west where the power is wind turbines or Permian basin gas., it's actually cost effective in that way as long as the power source of choice does not require much water cooling, or they don't mind operating at variable capacity based on availability of wind power.

---

I have been involved in working with several utility companies that have been requested to provide services for these developments. My observation on the water side is that once you explain how tight water is or how politically difficult it is, they change their cooling schemes to reduce water demand considerably. Energy availability and access to fiber are bigger issues to them than cooling water, and all the hand-wringing over them using all the water in the state is overblown

---

I assume you mean they are going with closed water loops, which I think is a much better plan. However, before the reality of water scarcity hit them, it was much cheaper to use an open loop system.

From an environmental standpoint, it's better to burn the nat gas to power the closed loop than deplete more ground water in an already drying area.

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A buddy of mine used to build these things. Most are going away from chilled water cooling systems to refrigerant based systems. Saves on water, but increases the amount of electricity needed to keep the centers operational.

The banks of 10,000kva generators they need for backup power on these things is really great for neighbors as well when they fire up. I think Ben said he had 40 or 50 of them on his last project.

HollywoodBQ said:

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Wildmen03 said:

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I'll be keeping an eye on this for morbid curiosity. I have cousins that just sold a ton of acreage to a data center in East Bernard. And another family member trying to sell her land to another one in the same area. Wharton county is pretty small and that area isn't meant for heavy traffic and has no power infrastructure at that scale.

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Data Center and East Bernard in the same sentence. Never thought I'd hear that.

Funny aside - If you've got cousins in East Bernard and are a BQ, we definitely know people in common. Mostly Street Fighters though.

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My family is mostly from the Katy area. I just have an aunt that married into an East Barnard/ Eagle Lake family.

I do have some good A-CO buddies though.

That also depends. I have seen some data centers get built on formerly irrigated farmland.

Wildmen03 said:

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I'll be keeping an eye on this for morbid curiosity. I have cousins that just sold a ton of acreage to a data center in East Bernard. And another family member trying to sell her land to another one in the same area. Wharton county is pretty small and that area isn't meant for heavy traffic and has no power infrastructure at that scale.

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You sure it is East Bernard and not Boling? I live in the area and haven't heard much about a data center in East Bernard. They put in a battery storage system north of town, but I have only heard about the community of Boling fighting the data center there.

If one is being put in East Bernard, there are going to be a helluva lot of very angry citizens.

Malachi Constant said:

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Nearly every hyperscale data center uses or will use closed loop cooling.

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That's what everyone claims but there is no proof of this and there are no regulations requiring it. They will go with whatever is cheapest.