In Ireland, data centers now consume more electricity than all their homes!

[thewayne]

Ireland has been becoming a popular site for the tech industry due to favorable tax laws and cheap electricity. I'm hoping they turn some of those laws around. The data center population grew by more than a third, and now they eat more electricity than the entirety of their residential population!

The problem is, data centers don't create a lot of jobs. They generate construction jobs for building them, and once built, the jobs go away or on to the next gig. They're mostly dark operations: no lights on except when someone is in the building. They might have some security guards who sweep around the exterior of the site occasionally. They maintain internal spares for when disk drives or arrays or servers go bad, they just fail over to new units. So these server farms do not generate a lot of jobs.

From the article, Metered electricity consumption by data centres increased from 290 gigawatt hours in the period from January to March 2015 to 1,058 in October to December 2021.. Six years. 3x fold in consumption. Dublin has stopped allowing construction and connection of data centers because they can't increase power production in the area.

Some tax money pours in, but it doesn't do much for the employment situation. Meanwhile, electricity is consumed, strain is put on the power grid, and heat and carbon are generated.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/data-centres-now-consuming-more-electricity-than-rural-homes-cso-1.4868221

Comments

[murakozi]

I live in the Land O Data Centers and they keep building more. If the county ever decides it needs a new flag, I'm going to propose one with a big ol cinder block with two crane arms crossed over it and "Data Uber Alles" below.

Meanwhile, there's still a huge demand for housing in the county. I have to think that property taxes for thousands of homes would be more than the county gets for the data centers.

[thewayne]

So many sweetheart deals to get those corps over, that you're probably right, the revenue is probably pretty small on a per unit basis.  :In aggregate, that would be a good question to pose to an MP in surgery.  I love your flag idea!  I've often used the phrase "[insert word] Uber Alles" in conversation with friends, I wouldn't use it with people whom I don't know as I wouldn't know whether or not they'd have the context for it.

[armiphlage]

Data centers and housing would make a good combination; you could use the waste heat in winter to heat the homes (and vent to the outside in summer). And unlike using waste industrial heat, data centers won't increase the traffic or noise in residential neighbourhoods.

[thewayne]

I wonder if the waste heat could be channeled in a geothermal heat pump fashion to produce cooling in the summer.  It's not my field, so I only have the vaguest knowledge of the area.  We looked into getting a geothermal heat pump once upon a time.

[armiphlage]

Technically yes. However, you'd need to have heat pipes attached to every processor (close to 100 C), instead of just using the heat being vented from the overall center (probably not much warmer than outdoor air temperature). That'd require cooperation from all the major suppliers of equipment to incorporate that in their designs, which would be painful.

[thewayne]

Ah, true.  Not nearly enough to be effective from the ambient.

[disneydream06]

Wouldn't it be nice if Corporate Taxes were treated that same as yours and mine?
They could cut the bleep out of our taxes if they would just make Corporate pay some taxes. :o
Hugs, Jon

[ndrosen]

Corporations don’t pay taxes, ultimately; taxes formally paid by corporations end up coming out of the pockets of stockholders, workers, and customers, in some combination.

[disneydream06]

I am going to declare myself a corporation. lol...

[thewayne]

The biggest dodge of CEOs and the wealthy is they don't take huge salaries.  Most of their income is through dividends, which is taxed at a much lower rate.  So they'll pay tax on, say, $900,000 and take home $15mil in stocks and dividends at a much lower rate. It's a great dodge once you're in the game.

[silveradept]

If I recall correctly, this sort of situation is happening because Ireland has conspicuously advertised itself as a business-friendly place with low taxes and regulation for so long. It would be fantastic of them to turn on those corporations in the way that the corporations turn on their users and say "Now that you've put so much infrastructure here in Ireland, we're going to raise your taxes sharply and force you to decide between staying with your investment or having to set your shop up somewhere else."

It won't happen, of course, but it would be nice if this were part of a deliberate scheme to get the corporations to actually pay real taxes.

[thewayne]

Would be nice to see that, but like you, I doubt it'll happen.