STERLING, Virginia — Lindsay Shaw was happy when she found out a data center was going up 100 meters from her front door.
Unlike most of her neighbors, she preferred a supercomputing hub to a shopping mall, which might bring a crush of car traffic. She was even more pleased when she learned the data center would generate its own power — rather than connecting to the grid and driving up her electric bills.
But then the data center turned on, along with the eight natural gas turbines powering it. Now her home is barraged by a high-pitch whine that she says has made her newly screened-in porch unusable…