If the internet had a physical body, data centers would be its brain. If you’ve ever streamed a show, backed up your photos, or asked a smart speaker for the weather, all of that information came through a data center.
As more companies race to expand their cloud capacity and computing power, they need more data centers, so the massive, quietly humming facilities are popping up in lots of different places. They might be tucked into industrial parks, converted from former warehouses, or, increasingly, rising up from a farm field into the rural landscape — in other words, places where people live, work, and raise families.
Data centers are simply buildings, often minimalist-looking on the outside, filled with racks of servers, powerful computers that store, process, and transmit the information that keeps the internet running.
When big changes come very quickly, often with little or no information that’s easily accessible, neighbors tend to react with suspicion and sometimes even anger. Residents of towns like Trenton, in Butler County, and South Bloomfield, in Pickaway County, have crowded local zoning boards, signed petitions, and generally begun pushing back against data centers planned in those communities. In fact, at least 30 Ohio municipalities have enacted or are considering enacting moratoriums on new data centers.
And that raises a question: What’s the big deal?
What is a data center?
Data centers are simply buildings, often minimalist-looking on the outside, filled with racks of servers, powerful computers that store, process, and transmit the information that keeps the internet running. Of course, they run on electricity — and lots of it, because all that information must be available in an instant every second of every day of the year.
If you store your digital photos in “the cloud,” that’s where they are. But data centers also process information. Every Google search runs through a data center — and since the arrival of Google’s AI-powered Gemini search tool, each individual search uses about 10 times the electricity they used before Gemini.
Also, Google’s isn’t the only software that uses artificial intelligence. In fact, the top five most-visited websites (and at least 16 of the top 20) rely heavily on AI. The average prompt on ChatGPT uses about 0.34 watt-hours of electricity, according to the company’s founder — about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes. Imagine the power and computing capacity needed to process a billion prompts every day, as ChatGPT claims it receives.
All that power consumption also generates a lot of heat, so data centers must be kept cool, and most use fans and water as the coolant.
The upside
Living near a data center isn’t like living near a factory or airport. There’s no smoke, no crowds, and no rush-hour traffic jams. The benefits of a nearby data center can be surprisingly tangible.
- Economic growth — Data centers bring investment. A single facility can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build, and that money flows into local construction, utility, and service businesses. After opening, they still create stable, well-paid technical jobs and often partner with local schools or workforce programs.
- Infrastructure upgrades — Data centers often pay to upgrade roads, power lines, and fiber networks. Translation: Your internet might get faster, and your lights might flicker less. Ohio’s electric cooperatives, in fact, have developed a rate structure specific to data centers that charges them for that new infrastructure, rather than passing it on to other co-op members.
- Low daily impact — Unlike distribution centers or manufacturing plants, data centers generate minimal traffic. Employees come and go in small numbers, and there’s no constant flow of trucks. For many neighborhoods, they’re among the quietest commercial neighbors around.
Reasons for concern
Still, living near a data center isn’t all upside. These facilities come with their own quirks — some subtle, some more noticeable.
- Noise pollution — They may not create noise from machinery or traffic, they aren’t necessarily silent. One of the biggest complaints from those who live near large data centers is a steady hum coming from cooling fans and backup generators. While modern centers use noise reduction designs, the sound can be noticeable, especially during maintenance or generator testing.
- Energy consumption — Data centers use enormous amounts of electricity. While that in itself doesn’t directly raise your utility bill, it can be a challenge for electric cooperatives to insulate current members from the costs of system upgrades needed in order to serve such large loads.
Water use is another challenge. Some data centers are converting to a closed-loop cooling system that eliminates the need to draw water from municipal or well water supplies, but otherwise, it’s estimated that those billion daily ChatGPT prompts alone take about 85,000 gallons of water to cool the processors handling them.
- Visual impact — Data centers are not exactly a charming part of the landscape. They are usually large, boxy, and often windowless buildings with prominent transmission lines coming into large new substations located close by. A data center can be a jarring industrial intrusion on a tranquil countryside.
- Land use concerns — Loss of farmland or green space is a problem, as the largest data centers can cover a larger footprint than three or four Wal-Marts, causing debate on whether the economic benefits outweigh the change in the character of an area.
Co-ops are ready
Electric cooperatives in Ohio own all the power generation they need to power their members’ homes and businesses, and the rate structure they’ve developed to serve data centers ensures that will be the case for a long time to come.
“Ohio’s electric cooperatives stand ready to serve any data center that is built in co-op territory, but our members will not be asked to shoulder the costs associated with serving them,” says Craig Grooms, president and CEO of Buckeye Power, the generation and transmission cooperative owned by Ohio’s co-ops.
“Owning our power generation has long insulated members from a lot of the highs and lows of the energy market, and our data center rate schedule builds on that foundation so that as new, large users connect to the grid, co-op members will continue to be protected for generations to come.”
