Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

grist.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 59 posts

Re: The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

#21

Post by legitster »

chucksta wrote: post #14
legitster wrote: post #9

> Large data centers are resource hogs, using as much as 5 million gallons of water a day. While this is a lot of water, but as a point of comparison typical golf course uses about 100-200 million gallons of water a year. It's still a drop in the bucket compared to agriculture.

You switched from gal/day to gal/year, converting shows golf courses using a roughly 10th of the same amount of water in a day ~500,000 gal.

I'm fully aware. But I'm quoting the article and golf courses don't use a consistent amount of water day to day, so I am trusting readers to do the math.

Re: The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

#22

Post by jedberg »

ck2 wrote: post #19
jedberg wrote: post #3

We really need to figure out ways to get big fat data pipes to places that are naturally cold. Like imagine if we could get big pipes to Antarctica and then build data centers there. Plenty of fresh water and cold enough that you could almost just cool it with outside air, and you can exhaust the water right back outside to freeze back up. You could also use the exhaust heat to warm up the living spaces nearby. The o…

Wasn't google looking at building datacenters deep in the ocean for "free" cooling? https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/pr... https://www.wired.com/story/data-centres-underwater-climate-... https://news.ufl.edu/2024/05/underwater-data-center-security... https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/servers/china-has-star...

Yes, but saltwater is very corrosive. Also they were hard to get to. A datacenter in the arctic regions would at least be accessible -- you could build attached housing and heat it with waste heat.

Re: The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

#23

Post by Dove »

jedberg wrote: post #3

We really need to figure out ways to get big fat data pipes to places that are naturally cold. Like imagine if we could get big pipes to Antarctica and then build data centers there. Plenty of fresh water and cold enough that you could almost just cool it with outside air, and you can exhaust the water right back outside to freeze back up. You could also use the exhaust heat to warm up the living spaces nearby. The o…

Building on permafrost is actually tricky with just residential levels of heat - houses are sometimes built on stilts in order to avoid melting the ground under them and making it unstable.

But I like where your head is at. Maybe an offshore platform? Alternatively, there are lots of places that aren't permafrost-cold which are nonetheless quite cool underground year round. I wonder how big a geothermal system would have to be to be an effective heat sink for a data center.

Re: The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

#24

Post by legitster »

chiffre01 wrote: post #15
legitster wrote: post #9

> Large data centers are resource hogs, using as much as 5 million gallons of water a day. While this is a lot of water, but as a point of comparison typical golf course uses about 100-200 million gallons of water a year. It's still a drop in the bucket compared to agriculture.

Not defending the water usage of golf courses, but 5 million a day is a lot more water than 100-200 million per year. I guess you could say data centers provide a tangible utility while golf courses do not.

I think more importantly, a large regional T1 data center probably supports a region of the US that includes hundreds if not thousands of golf courses.

Re: The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

#25

Post by lotsofpulp »

chiffre01 wrote: post #15
legitster wrote: post #9

> Large data centers are resource hogs, using as much as 5 million gallons of water a day. While this is a lot of water, but as a point of comparison typical golf course uses about 100-200 million gallons of water a year. It's still a drop in the bucket compared to agriculture.

Not defending the water usage of golf courses, but 5 million a day is a lot more water than 100-200 million per year. I guess you could say data centers provide a tangible utility while golf courses do not.

If the data centers are being used to ship mostly garbage entertainment video, then I would say the utility of both is similarly "tangible" (whatever that means), but the datacenter obviously delivers orders of magnitude more utility hours (to orders of magnitude more people).

Re: The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

#26

Post by greenavocado »

downvotetruth wrote: post #17

For data centers, let's use prime retail real estate at a freeway exit: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Loudoun+County,+VA/@38.999... no where near where others might have a better understanding to put industrial property like the power company: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Loudoun+County,+VA/@39.208... wonder what consultant won that job.

It makes more sense if you need to defend the location in wartime. It also might not be just a datacenter even if there is one above ground. Many innocent looking features have strategic military value. Another easy one is the random long straight sections of US Interstates or Mt Weather Emergency Operations Center.

Re: The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

#30

Post by giantg2 »

jedberg wrote: post #3

We really need to figure out ways to get big fat data pipes to places that are naturally cold. Like imagine if we could get big pipes to Antarctica and then build data centers there. Plenty of fresh water and cold enough that you could almost just cool it with outside air, and you can exhaust the water right back outside to freeze back up. You could also use the exhaust heat to warm up the living spaces nearby. The o…

Microsoft is already working on undersea data centers.

I assume some sort of geothermal(including water based) could be used in many regions already.

Post reply on HN