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‘Elonville’: US residents say Musk’s xAI offered to buy homes if they don’t sue over datacenter noise (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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Several Mississippi homes have been purchased near datacenters and one resident said realtor outlined target to buy more than 400

People in a Mississippi neighborhood, many of whom dislike a nearby power plant central to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence ambitions, have received a stark offer – to sell their houses to his company and make way.

Real estate agents have been going door to door in Southaven, Mississippi, on behalf of xAI, Musk’s AI company that was folded into the SpaceX entity in February, touting a deal to purchase houses as long as the owners agree to not join a lawsuit against the company over the power plant’s noise.

This plan could potentially swallow up almost the entire neighborhood of Colonial Hills, on the western flank of Southaven. A realtor told one resident there is a target to purchase 418 homes, with 18 homeowners already agreeing to sell, according to a recording of a conversation heard by the Guardian. xAI did not respond to questions over these numbers and its plans for the neighborhood and has previously said it intends to be be a good neighbor; it denies all claims in the noise lawsuit.

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[–] 1 point 2 days ago

The 3 strategies if not sharing electricity is overproduction in summer used to make/sell H2 from surplus, and backup energy in winter (can come from H2/ammonia), and throttling down usage on some winter days.

That first strategy (overproduction) is helped with any size wire for export/import. Southern US has less seasonal production variation than north, but the solar sizing formula is based on maximum summer production day. (datacenter + electrolysis gw * 24) / maximum sun hours. Very heavy electrolysis permits free power for one datacenter, and high power ROI for providing power to an equal 2nd datacenter. Reason is simply that electrolysis power sink costs $300/kw, while datacenter power sink is $50k/kw.

The trick is to go much huger than your suggestion. Massive batteries support either longer H2 electrolysis use in summer, or night/duck curve electricity delivery. Unilike utility hookups, transformer capacity, solar and batteries, with Chinese supply chain that can include domestic manufacturing is a quick/solved high capacity/quick development path. Solar, batteries, electrolysis can be deployed in 100s of mw per month that match gpu installations instead of a monolitic power plant.

Some models for Nebraska and Phoenix: https://lemmy.ca/post/63402719

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