{"id":6485,"date":"2026-07-04T18:36:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T18:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=6485"},"modified":"2026-07-04T18:36:04","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T18:36:04","slug":"heat-adds-to-strains-on-areas-with-data-centers-raising-the-temperature-on-ai-debates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=6485","title":{"rendered":"Heat adds to strains on areas with data centers, raising the temperature on AI debates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By MATT O\u2019BRIEN and KAITLYN HUAMANI, AP Technology Writers<\/strong><\/p>\n

LOWELL, Mass. (AP) \u2014 Eileen Castle\u2019s swimming pool, one of the only ones for blocks around, was once a refuge for neighborhood children on hot summer days.<\/p>\n

Read more StubHub sued by fans who say ticket cancellations crushed dreams of going to World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n

But even as temperatures soared this week, Castle, 82, said she won\u2019t be filling the pool \u2014 not with the data center behind her house buzzing with the sound of its industrial air conditioners and its backup diesel generators belching fumes at unexpected times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think about the air quality, the water, what effects it has on the kids in the area,\u201d she said on her front stoop as children whirred past on bicycles.<\/p>\n

Hot weather of the kind sweeping the eastern U.S. drives up electricity demand for data centers, adding to their strain on power grids and worsening air quality for surrounding areas. The impact on communities like the racially diverse Sacred Heart neighborhood in Lowell, Massachusetts underscores why the artificial intelligence industry is feeling so much heat over the fast-sprouting facilities.<\/p>\n

Around the country, data centers have been blamed increasingly for a host of environmental ills. Some tech industry figures say the facilities have become lightning rods for concerns over broader economic and societal changes posed by the AI boom.<\/p>\n

But on sweltering days, it\u2019s hard not to see the effects on Castle\u2019s neighborhood, which the state has designated as facing higher environmental and health risks because of a population that\u2019s been historically excluded from political decision-making.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s majority low-income and working family, family members who are working hard every day to just try to put food on the table,\u201d said state Rep. Tara Hong, a Democrat who represents a heavily Cambodian American district in Lowell, a city of about 115,000 people northwest of Boston. \u201cIt\u2019s an inclusive place there and that data center is just smack in the middle of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Data centers require more resources to cope with heat waves<\/h4>\n

A heat wave is \u201calmost the worst situation for data center operation,\u201d said Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied AI\u2019s environmental toll.<\/p>\n

A data center\u2019s racks of computer servers run hot and there are two ways to keep them running without interruption, Ren said: refrigeration-based cooling, which is energy-intensive, and evaporative cooling, which is water-intensive.<\/p>\n

Some data centers will turn to backup diesel generators as a \u201cpreventative measure\u201d to mitigate the likelihood of an outage, Ren said. If the grid is highly stressed, grid operators will sometimes ask data centers to turn on their generators as \u201cthe last line of defense,\u201d Ren said.<\/p>\n

Diesel emissions can have harmful effects on human health, even with short-term exposure. If too many diesel generators are fired up during heat waves, Ren said that could be \u201ca disaster for the local air quality.\u2033<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The operator of the Lowell data center, the Markley Group, said it has planted more than 2,000 trees nearby to improve air quality. CEO Jeff Markley said in a statement to The Associated Press that the company has switched on generators in an emergency only a handful of times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not run proactively or continuously; they engage only during an actual power disruption to keep critical systems online, plus brief weekly testing of about five minutes per unit, run one generator at a time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A data center sprouted where a pasta factory made spaghetti<\/h4>\n

Markley said he chose Lowell because of its abundant water for cooling \u2014 supplied by the same Merrimack River that powered 19th century textile mills in the Industrial Revolution. He said the Lowell facility uses about 118,000 gallons of water per day at the peak of summer, a small fraction of the city\u2019s daily consumption.<\/p>\n

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Castle, a lifelong resident, was among those who welcomed the Markley Group a decade ago when it first started building on the site of an abandoned Prince spaghetti factory. But about two years ago, when the Markley Group added its second cooling tank behind her above-ground swimming pool, along with a growing number of surveillance cameras, the relationship had soured.<\/p>\n

In response to growing opposition, Lowell\u2019s City Council voted 10-0 in February to pass a moratorium blocking further data center expansion for a year.<\/p>\n

Data center electricity use has grown in the last few years, said Jonathan Koomey, a researcher who has been studying the computing warehouses for 30 years. But it\u2019s \u201cvery much a local phenomenon,\u201d he said. On a national scale, Koomey said demand growth has been moderate in recent years and he doesn\u2019t expect that to change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a national crisis. It\u2019s not explosive growth nationally,\u201d he said. But in communities surrounding data centers, there are environmental costs, local economic costs, traffic and other concerns that need to be accounted for, Koomey added.<\/p>\n

When temperatures climb into triple digits \u2014 as they\u2019re expected to this week in New England \u2014 it\u2019s harder to push heat out of a data center. Keeping it cool then requires more power, as is true of commercial buildings and homes. That can strain power grids and pose a \u201creal risk\u201d of power outages, Koomey said.<\/p>\n

That strain looks different from the typical summer AC rush, when systems operators are dealing with \u201ca lot of small loads\u201d from individuals turning on home air conditioners, Koomey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the challenges that the data center operators face is that these data centers are pretty big loads. They are big enough that they have to think about how to coordinate them and make sure that they\u2019re not all cutting off at the same time or coming on at the same time,\u2033 he said.<\/p>\n

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a nonprofit that develops and enforces standards for the utility industry, recently issued an alert about the \u201cunprecedented challenges from a surge in large power consumers\u201d and developed guidelines to mitigate the \u201cimmediate risks posed\u2033 by AI data centers.<\/p>\n

As servers heat up, so do community data center tensions<\/h4>\n

Tensions ran so high in Lowell this week that police officers temporarily detained a 14-year-old girl who spoke out of turn at a city-led community forum on data center zoning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not hurting anyone,\u201d the girl shouted Monday after police officers escorted her from a middle school auditorium. \u201cWe just don\u2019t want data centers!\u201d<\/p>\n

A coalition of data center opponents is increasingly clashing with electricians employed by Markley and other data center backers who say the facility boosts Lowell\u2019s ties to the tech industry.<\/p>\n

Criticized for calling police to the contentious meeting and later asking an officer to remove the girl, Lowell Mayor Erik Gitschier, whose office is nonpartisan, told local talk radio station WCAP he didn\u2019t know her age at the time and defended his efforts to try to bring decorum to a topic he said deserves debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was warm out,\u201d he said. \u201cYou had people who had definite, passionate positions and they were screaming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Arrests of immigrant parents create mental health crisis for children<\/a><\/p>\n

Huamani contributed from New York.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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