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That's right on a big river. Why are they using aquifers at all over there?
Edit: they are using the river. But why is this such a big issue? They evaporate some of it and dump the rest back in presumably?
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Do they heat it that much to evaporate a lot of it? I've read about one water cooled DC, don't remember which one exactly. But I do remember they were drawing water at around 15C and returning back to the river at 20C.
They're using evaporative cooling. It isn't just a basic heat exchanger.
For anyone wondering, Google consumed 25% of water used in a city of 16000 people. This doesn't seem unreasonable.
The amount of water being driven into the atmosphere will have interesting impact on the local vegetation. I find it interesting this never comes up in these articles discussing the impact of DC footprint. More alarming is the immense heat load coming from many other sites. A 50MW site is literally a space heater taking 50MW of power and convecting it into the atmosphere. I cannot imagine how that can avoid significa…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...
If driving insane amounts of humidity into desert air has any effect on desert ecosystems, we'd know by now.
Mining groundwater is a big concern. Putting it back into the atmosphere afterward, not so much.
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Dumb question, but can't they condense the water and collect it somewhere?
Same question. Why cant it be a closed loop system?
Closed loop system for a system this big and hungry would demand many km^2 of radiators with a forced air-flow. Look at your A/C external unit - it's barely handles 10-15C degree difference for a small room and that is for a human with a measly 300-500 BTU/h. A typical server is 2000 to 6000 BTU/h, depending on the configuration and a typical 42U rack would have at least 10-15 servers, not counting TOR switches and other shenanigans.
For anyone wondering, Google consumed 25% of water used in a city of 16000 people. This doesn't seem unreasonable.
For anyone wondering, Google consumed 25% of water used in a city of 16000 people. This doesn't seem unreasonable.
I fail to see what exactly this improves about the situation. It's the same aquifer whether it's underneath a cow pasture or a metropolis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the people earning the other 90% do not count? I thought wealthier people doing whatever they want was a bad idea, but not if it's Googlers.
I didn't say that, but if you think the wealth Google provides those 200 doesn't benefit the remaining 16k then you're delusional.