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Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

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Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#81

Post by dogma1138 »

m-j-fox wrote: post #57
dogma1138 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large scale water cooling systems are open return systems. Basically they pump in cold water and pump hot water back out. Cooling the water is expensive and ineffective on large scales. Beyond that you have evaporative cooling which is used for large scale HVAC systems in this case the water simply evaporates away into the atmosphere.

Fine but why not pump it out onto some crops? Here I am paying to heat water for my house and pool -- I should move next door to Google and hook up to their drain pipe.

You can try some places use reclaimed hot water from industrials sources for metropolitan heating.

Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#82

Post by macinjosh »

Pardon my naivety but I am curious why in use cases like this the same water can't be reused? My car uses the same coolant over and over. While that is an apples to oranges comparison couldn't the water be allowed to naturally cool after use in a covered retention pond and then be recycled into the cooling system? Is the water from the aquifer particularly cold to begin with?

Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#83

Post by canadian_voter »

aaron695 wrote: post #31
canadian_voter wrote: post #2

Going to go ahead and recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife . And The Windup Girl is even better, but not on topic.

The concept that water is so scarce that it's even rare for drinking never gelled for me. But I still enjoyed the book.

I don't see it as a matter of absolute scarcity. In the book, drinking water for the poor is scarce, but the upper middle class has access to fountains and gardens, etc. If you think of it as a matter of control, it makes more sense. If you're on the inside of the arcology, everything you need is provided for. If you're on the outside, you're on your own. Resources are kept artificially scarce for any number of reasons, but mostly to support the status quo.

Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#84

Post by URSpider94 »

themihai wrote: post #70
kjksf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive. Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline. If Google had a cheaper way to cool their servers, they would. If we have plenty of cheap water then we should use it to cool the server or for watering lawns or whatever. If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use…

The government could change the economics with a tax on cooling down the servers with water so I believe the morality can beat pure economics.

Even in this case, the business is operating on an economic basis. The state has just adjusted the costs to demand a different economic outcome.

Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#85

Post by sctb »

RodericDay wrote: post #38
kjksf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive. Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline. If Google had a cheaper way to cool their servers, they would. If we have plenty of cheap water then we should use it to cool the server or for watering lawns or whatever. If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use…

Also, old people have little to no economic use. We should dispose of them. Looking at everything as a psychopathic economic agent is fun!

Please don't post like this here.

http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#86

Post by ew6082 »

kjksf wrote: post #28
ryandvm wrote: post #3

Water has an exceptionally high heat capacity, I get it. But using drinking water to cool our servers (in the interest of seeing the very best ads) seems like an exceptionally short-sighted choice for us to make. If there is a less worthwhile thing for us to be doing with potable water, I can't think of it.

Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive. Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline. If Google had a cheaper way to cool their servers, they would. If we have plenty of cheap water then we should use it to cool the server or for watering lawns or whatever. If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use…

And this is a 100% economic decision. With 1.5 million gpd, they would likely just be shotgunning groundwater through their cooling water system instead of using a closed loop system with chillers, and requisite power bill. Just another example of the tragedy of the commons.

Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#87

Post by jsjohnst »

jankey wrote: post #77
jsjohnst wrote: post #39

Google is continually touted as the industry leader in efficient DC design, yet they do wasteful operations like this. I just don't get it. On the other hand, Yahoo is constantly shat on (sometimes validly), yet they solved this years ago. Their Lockport, NY data center does not need air conditioning because of its design and the cool local weather. It uses 50 percent less electricity and 99 percent less water compar…

We are industry-leading efficient, the water is used for evaporative cooling, very efficient. Other sites use water from an industrial canal or cold sea water. Look here: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal... . PUE globally is 1.06, compared to Yahoo/Cap Gemini Lockports 1.08. (Disclaimer: I work in (another) Google datacentre.)

Respectfully, please correct me if I'm wrong, but PUE doesn't take into account water usage. So driving an extremely low PUE while wasting millions of gallons of water per day to do so and then touting that as a win, feels rather disingenuous to me.

I love how you use things like seawater in Finland and non-potable water elsewhere, but don't claim this DC in SC is even remotely environmentally friendly when to save on electricity and keep your PUE low, you are using millions of gallons of drinking water per day.

Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#88

Post by Caveman_Coder »

jankey wrote: post #77
jsjohnst wrote: post #39

Google is continually touted as the industry leader in efficient DC design, yet they do wasteful operations like this. I just don't get it. On the other hand, Yahoo is constantly shat on (sometimes validly), yet they solved this years ago. Their Lockport, NY data center does not need air conditioning because of its design and the cool local weather. It uses 50 percent less electricity and 99 percent less water compar…

We are industry-leading efficient, the water is used for evaporative cooling, very efficient. Other sites use water from an industrial canal or cold sea water. Look here: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal... . PUE globally is 1.06, compared to Yahoo/Cap Gemini Lockports 1.08. (Disclaimer: I work in (another) Google datacentre.)

PUE will only tell you how efficient you're operating your DC (assuming everything is metered and CX'd properly), but as a metric it fails to take into consideration your larger ecological footprint.

Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#89

Post by Caveman_Coder »

jsjohnst wrote: post #87
jankey wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are industry-leading efficient, the water is used for evaporative cooling, very efficient. Other sites use water from an industrial canal or cold sea water. Look here: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal... . PUE globally is 1.06, compared to Yahoo/Cap Gemini Lockports 1.08. (Disclaimer: I work in (another) Google datacentre.)

Respectfully, please correct me if I'm wrong, but PUE doesn't take into account water usage. So driving an extremely low PUE while wasting millions of gallons of water per day to do so and then touting that as a win, feels rather disingenuous to me. I love how you use things like seawater in Finland and non-potable water elsewhere, but don't claim this DC in SC is even remotely environmentally friendly when to save o…

You are correct, PUE only looks at power efficiency, the metric Google uses for water is WUE.

Also, like you said, these metrics only take into account the efficiency of the DC but fail to measure their ecological footprint.

Re: Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

#90

Post by jankey »

jsjohnst wrote: post #87
jankey wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are industry-leading efficient, the water is used for evaporative cooling, very efficient. Other sites use water from an industrial canal or cold sea water. Look here: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal... . PUE globally is 1.06, compared to Yahoo/Cap Gemini Lockports 1.08. (Disclaimer: I work in (another) Google datacentre.)

Respectfully, please correct me if I'm wrong, but PUE doesn't take into account water usage. So driving an extremely low PUE while wasting millions of gallons of water per day to do so and then touting that as a win, feels rather disingenuous to me. I love how you use things like seawater in Finland and non-potable water elsewhere, but don't claim this DC in SC is even remotely environmentally friendly when to save o…

I was replying to the parent on Google not being industry leading efficient and especially comparing to the Yahoo Lockport DC.

But you're right, regarding to water usage we don't publish numbers (nor does anyone else afaik, I haven't found any WUE number for e.g. Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook...) so it's difficult to compare this to others.

I am however confident that a lot of things have been considered and this was the best option, we have imho a good track record trying to do the best for the environment, a lot of attention is being paid to this internally. E.g. everything running on green electricity, which is not the cheapest.

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