this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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me_irl
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Its external. The massive power and cooling requirements cause massive noise from fans, transformers etc. Funnily enough, the same applies to solar farms.
Never have been near a data center, but walked under windmills: from about 100 meters you hear the "whoom-whoom-whoom" sound, and if you walk right under, it gets uncomfortable because of added vibrations. But it's nothing terrible and neither it can be heard from a big distance - the noise didn't make us regret our walk under the windmills - we talked normally under them, etc
Source for solar farms being loud? Why would they need fans or transformers?
Heres the first google result.
https://kingswaysolarcommunityaction.co.uk/solar-farm-noise-pollution-uk/
So are you/they saying that fossil fuel power plants don’t make as much noise? I would disagree with that.
1: FF plants should also have inverters and transformers, I doubt they make electricity in exactly the way we want on the lines, just like solar.
2: Ff plants have a fuck ton of machinery and people and fumes that are constantly being emitted in addition to the pretty minimal noise from transformers or whatever.
No im not. Loudest machines I've measured so far have been diesels. Most owned by assholes.
On point 1, as far as I understand, generally since they use fossil fuels to hear water and generate steam to spin turbines, the generators output grid-compatible AC right away
That’s certainly possible! I don’t know if it’s true or not, since my arguments there are entirely speculative on my end, without any real evidence backing them. I’m currently not able to do any real research to support my claims, so unless this gets more attention, I’ll just leave it at that, speculation