Didn't realize that not only are data centers consuming large volumes of electricity that could be better used elsewhere but they also consume copious amounts of water to keep themselves cool. This town in Arizona is looking at one microsoft data center that will use 56 million gallons of drinking water per year to keep cool. starting with the mining, add in energy demand, water demand, heat generation, ending up with the disposal/recycling. This whole data driven system doesn't feel very green. Huge Microsoft plant is draining tiny Arizona town of its water supply to power AI and cloud development - with locals furious tech giant is redacting its figures in city's records (msn.com) Microsoft has refused to provide the exact figures on their Goodyear center's water use, according to The Atlantic. They reportedly redacted exact figures in city records, saying it is 'proprietary' information. But they did provide an estimate, saying it will use 56 million gallons of water a year once the third building is completed. It is not just a problem in Arizona, researchers at UC Riverside estimated last year that global AI demand could cause data centers to use up to 1.7 trillion gallons of fresh water by 2027.
Several years ago people cried about wafer fabs draining water reserves. Over time, many processes in the fab became self-sustaining through massive water recycling and re-use programs. The remaining water was chemically treated to neutralize it and then used for the grounds keeping (ie, water the grass and trees). In terms of a thermal cooling, I am not sure why they would need 56 million "new" gallons per year. Seems that with a properly designed chiller system most of the 56 million gallons would be pumped into a closed-loop system at the start and you would not need anything near that volume in the future.
As for power consumption, I realize that down in Goodyear that they are running up against Native American lands, but as a condition of building a huge energy hogging data center in the middle of the desert, did anyone force them to build an adjacent solar farm to power the center? I mean, it is smack in the middle of the Arizona desert, it is not like they don't have sunlight in abundance or anything??
would seem to be a no brainer to blend solar with thermal storage for cooling. fpl gives a client a break for them freezing water at night during of peak hours and then thawing it during the day to cool their buildings. if they used traditional towers for these data centers, evaporation, anti-scaling washdown etc could use large amounts of water, especially in a desert
I was intrigued by this thread as I expected it to be utilizing the modern slang definition of thirsty.
Really don't understand why the high usage of water unless they are just taking the normal temperature of water you get out of the tap to cool and then flushing it down the drain. There is little cost of the cooling then outside of the cost of the water. They could make it a closed loop with the water company and return the warmed up water back to the water towers for use by the citizens.
I could ask one of our guys but probably not for a few weeks. One of our companies built the cooling systems for four major data centers running a large portion of the US’s financial transactions through them. If memory serves there are two sets of cooling systems. A closed loop one completely on the inside of hte building and an external system. I’m not sure how that one operated. Unfortunately many data centers out west are in the desert. I’ve been involved with some in Quincy, WA, Boardman, OR, Eastern Colorado, etc. Plenty more in these locations where land is cheap, power is aplenty, and the climate is dry.
The dry climate actually helps. Typical summer day in the Phoenix metro, and water evaporates so fast that it can cool something down 30 degrees or more! In fact, many houses in Arizona don't have traditional A/C, but an evaporative/swamp cooler, that uses water to cool things down, and then blow the air through the house/apartment. The issue is it uses water. Growing up in Florida, I wasn't prepared for how cold you get after getting out of a swimming pool in Arizona. It's difficult to describe if you have never experienced it yourself. With that said, there needs to be a closed system to save as much water as possible.
