Dunwoody has a data center in it. Has had for some time. In the perimeter area. Great place for one, with both power and data infrastructure. And it has gone without notice for some years. Now, for who knows what reason, data centers are the mark of the devil and must be stopped. Rouse the rabble. Get the pro protesters on the job. The owners of the data center are prepping for renovations and "neighbors are concerned" as if they don't know these renovations are a temporary issue. But today's virtue signaling is "I'm Against Data Centers." "I Stand With Ukraine" is so yesterday.
Let's be clear: there are going to be data centers. You may prefer they not be located near you. Not in your backyard. When did that become acceptable? Apparently when war was declared against data centers. Maybe you'd like data centers far, far removed from your driveway. Maybe on the other side of the globe. Perhaps in a competing nation. Perhaps an adversarial nation. Sure. Why not? Let's give all kinds of sensitive data to those countries. Isn't that what we ended up doing with TikTok?
The point of the spear for the anti-data center protesters is electricity, in the hopes that they can convince the gen-pop that their power bills will balloon. They've given up on water as it doesn't resonate and won't play well in Atlanta, which is notorious for abusing regional water supplies. So electricity it is. The anti-s scored a recent victory getting the town of Lovejoy to rescind a commitment other support a data center in their town and so it will go somewhere else. What the folks beating the power bill drum seem to have never seen or heard of is one of these:
These are towers supporting overhead power lines that distribute electricity all across this great state (and country) of ours. That's because NIMBY-s of yore did not want a power plant anywhere near them. But, if you live in daVille, and get out at all, you've probably see several of them. These protesters don't know what these things do or think you don't, because what this means is the data center you can't see because it is out of town is going to use the very same electricity it would have were it in lovely downtown Dunwoody. Same electricity, generated at the same power plants, and purchased from the same power company. If, and it is an if, data center power consumption causes your bill to increase then it really doesn't matter if the data center is in Lovejoy, Cordele or Dunwoody. Pushing them into Alabama won't really help either, because...Southern Company.
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