Facebook/Meta data center solar farm - Mobile Bay area

The hurricanes will feast

I wonder what they main power provider will be because solar isn't it. Kiss the ground water in that area good bye, just like those folks in NLA. In 10 years the south will be just like the Midwest and Cali with everything running dry and salt water incursion.

And now the local news stations are losing their fricking minds over it

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Awesome, job opportunities for the area. They bring a ton of jobs as well as increased support infrastructure near them.

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This incorrect. It's not a building nor a highway. Minimal construction after the land is clear-cut. Couple security guards. Up at the data center you might see ten full time jobs. Arent they still making these solar panels in China?

Regardless of your views or politics here (I don't see how anybody that hunts or considers themselves an environmentalist can support this) it was clearly done in a hurry and very quietly because they knew the opposition would be tremendous on both sides.

Company, I work for subs employees to two current data centers near Austin. Element Cricital and Data Foundry total about 230 total employees. Look to have a contract about wrapped up with the current meta project in NELA. Looking at 250+ employees.

The solar farm part is the big sticking point I think. Not whether it will create 10 or 200 jobs.

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They subcontract to various construction companies that employ fleets of illegals. A data center near me under construction was raided last month and lost 70% of their workforce.

Post construction you’re talking low wage security jobs and possibly a dozen or so on site full time tech positions that will be filled by H1B.

Baw thinks it’s 1985.

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They also are currently driving a pretty damned hot economy and will do so for the foreseeable future. AI created an additional 1.1% boost in US GDP in the first six months of 2025. Just a year ago. Without that boost the economy was pretty anemic. The impact appears to be even greater in subsequent quarters but the data is not solidified at this point...it is, however, doubtful that AI didn't positively impact the economy in those quarters or that it will not continue to do so for the foreseeable future. WIthout data centers and their massive consumption of power and water and resource consumption that impact will lag and in a free market that is not a moral stand to take. Data centers certainly do not create many jobs in the commuting area, that is a certified fact, beyond the period of construction....but they do facilitate a massive amount of commerce spread out across the entire globe that does create a massive number of jobs and betters the lives of everyone on the planet. Nobody likes having one in their neighborhood and the continued protests and regulatory hurdles will drive innovation that makes them more palatable and that is also a function of a free market...folks can raise hell without penalty....but they are highly necessary for the continued growth and expansion of the US economy in their current manifestation.

Unabated free market economics in a completely global economy means unabated rape and pillage of natural resources.

There are environmentally friendly ways to construct, power and cool things like this. They just aren't the absolute cheapest so they aren't used.

This is where both political sides get everything wrong. The rednecks hear environment, think EPA and PETA, and want no part till something is cutting down their hunting spot. The blue hairs hear carbon capture and solar and wind and get giddy as hell while the landscape is destroyed to support it. Both sides are very wrong.

I dont know the details of this project, im just bitching. I doubt they use river water though. River water requires exchangers, aquifer water doesnt.

If they are using river water ONLY, my general level of "frick those people" is cut back a fair bit. Raw water and heat exchangers is a good way to do this. I'd be amazed if thats actually what they are doing though.

Solar farms can get fricked regardless. If a solar panel goes anywhere other than on the outer shell of a usable building, its probably a stupid misapplication of the technology.

InB4 some jackass whoring out his wifes pawpaws land and getting rich off solar panels or windmills tells me im wrong.

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I take the point but if the person who is a hunter or an environmentalist doesn't own the land in question and is not actively acquiring the land it is none of their business what someone else does with their property. Unfortunately that is the foundation of free market capitalism.

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This isn't necessarily true, either. Say you own property A. It can be a house that you have your life savings invested into. Or it could be a condo development that you've invested quite a few peoples' savings into.

You don't own property B, adjacent. I show up and open a scrap yard or garbage dump and run it 24/7. How do you feel? Your wife is pissed because it keeps you up all night. You can't sell property A because who wants to buy next to a scrap yard? Now your investment is lost.

We do have some land use restrictions because otherwise, as a pro-capitalist person that we predominantly are here on this board, it would inhibit the financing of capitalist ventures if the lender feared a garbage dump could open next door.