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Comment by ckozlowski | Hacker News Reader

I wrote this in another reply here, but from this article and others I've read on Space X's/Tesla's datacenters, it's the use of turbine generators that cause that enormous whine sound. (Note how similar it is to a jet engine.) I live in Ashburn, where we have datacenters all over the place. But none of them sound like this. At worst, we get a dull hum, much lower in volume, if the air handlers are working especially hard. But you need to be on top of them to hear that.

Ashburn has the infrastructure however. From what I'm reading, other places don't. So they bring in power on-site, and it seems to be much less regulated.

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Perhaps an un-fun fun fact if you're living near one of these, but Boom aerospace has pivoted to start selling turbines for data centers in addition to its normal business.

Not sure they got to having a normal business yet. Hopefully they don't just pivot entirely to energy.

There are no turbine generators at the DC in the video and that's not what gas turbine power plants sound like. they're much higher pitched.

But yeah, the ones with the turbine generators are even louder and more shrill. The xAI DC in Memphis last year had thirty five portable gas turbine generators.

That’s 35 jet engines operating at high power coming to a neighborhood near you. Sounds like fun.

35 consumer drones delivering 35 chunks of metal.

lol

These simple natural gas turbine generators are also massively inefficient - the same natural gas used in a combined cycle district heating plant would have its energy used much more efficiently, but here instead most of it ends up as waste heat, for the same amount of CO2 generated.

Not to mention the same natural gas could be used for chemical processes, like fertilizer production. You know, helping make the stuff we eat to survive.

Last I checked, you can't eat AI.

Usually I think they're trying to get the infrastructure, but because we've created a permitting nightmare across the US, they can't get the permits for anything they want, so they're stuck with mobile generation that doesn't require much permitting.

Edit: I don't think it SHOULD be this way, but downvoting me doesn't change that, only organizing for changes does.

Using unpermitted turbine generators[1] is just as illegal as violating the other permits they’d need to obtain for grid access. Doing illegal acts is a choice on their part — no one is forcing them to do that. There is no inherent right to private profit at the expense of the social good.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk...

That article's author says it's illegal. Neither the EPA nor a judge have made any judgments about Colossus generators being illegal (in fact, it doesn't sound like the EPA has made any enforcement actions at all, to date).

The article is about the EPA issuing a new rule (see the link behind "declared" in the article you linked to) closing the "nonroad engine" loophole, which the author of the article asserts makes those turbines illegal. The same new rule created a new subcategory allowing turbines for up to 24 months with streamlined compliance, and left a path open to EPA certification for turbines under Title II.

But the Colossus 1 turbines were already permitted by the time that article was published. At least 2/3 of the Colossus 2 turbines are permitted already too.

In the next month, there'll be a preliminary injunction hearing for the NAACP's lawsuit, but the DOD and DOJ both oppose the suit, so we'll see.

The companies doing this in Texas aren't even using that nonroad engine loophole - they're just getting Texas' minor permits. The EPA said in June that they're not going to create national rules, and instead defer to states. So you're seeing Virginia tighten regulation, and Texas loosen it.

So frankly, no, none of it is illegal. I think you're right that it should be, but that's a different problem, and not one you can help fix by claiming it is. If you want all this to be cleaner, go fix permitting for fixed clean energy generation, because it's a disaster.

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