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The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

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

#51

Post by downvotetruth »

ipython wrote: post #46
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.

Scroll to the northwest a bit and you can see that you can ride Metro straight to the data center! How convenient!

Remember to bring lipstick as the trashed empty lots nearby serve as a great wild boar attraction to kiss and ride.

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

#52

Post by graphe »

I've heard of data centers on ships or on the water, someone told me the internet wasn't green (big shock to me at that point) and what they're doing. https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/pr... https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nautilus-data-tec...

Not sure why they aren't more standard.

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

#53

Post by xyst »

jedberg wrote: post #20
xyst wrote: post #13

If ISPs weren’t so stingy with providing symmetrical, >10 Gbps, connections to residential homes. Then we wouldn’t need to have centralized data centers that consume massive amounts of resources in a specific region. Instead we could have distributed these resources amongst the entire country. Create local jobs (imagine a local “data center” that serves resources to people of {city}, {state}. The internet should be d…

I don't think this would solve the problem like you hope. Case in point, Netflix has this setup already for streaming video. Tons of small racks all over the world. It's a huge pain to maintain and was only worth it because of the huge difference in customer experience. And even though they already have it, they still use AWS for all the control plane work, because it's just so much easier administratively. Admining…

I am not aware of what Netflix has been doing. Care to share any docs they have published or is this “insider” information?

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

#54

Post by alistairSH »

nielsbot wrote: post #28

Can't they use saltwater? Or grey water? What do coastline nuclear plants do?

Not coastline, but the Lake Anna facility in central VA uses lake water for cooling. It's a two-loop system - internal loop touches the radioactive bits, which is pumped to heat exchangers, and an external loop ingests cool lake water and dumps warmer water back into the lake.

The "warm" side of the lake has more valuable housing because the lake remains usable for a longer period of time each season. There's a series of dams that keep the smaller warm section separate from the natural cold side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Anna_Nuclear_Generating_...

https://www.virginialakehouses.com/wordpress/wp-content/uplo...

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

#55

Post by rufus_foreman »

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.

5 million gallons is approximately the amount the Mississippi river discharges in one second.

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

#56

Post by sdwr »

Symbiote wrote: post #37
NegativeLatency wrote: post #16

And here I am paying for energy to heat my house like a sucker, would be neat if we co-located data centers in cities and then captured/transported the heat to homes/buildings

Facebook's data centre in Denmark does this. https://www.ramboll.com/extract-heat-from-data-centres/large...

Is that picture at the top real? It looks like aspirational pre-planning concept art!

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

#58

Post by desertrider12 »

xyst wrote: post #53
jedberg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this would solve the problem like you hope. Case in point, Netflix has this setup already for streaming video. Tons of small racks all over the world. It's a huge pain to maintain and was only worth it because of the huge difference in customer experience. And even though they already have it, they still use AWS for all the control plane work, because it's just so much easier administratively. Admining…

I am not aware of what Netflix has been doing. Care to share any docs they have published or is this “insider” information?

It's not a secret, they explain it all here: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

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

#59

Post by Symbiote »

sdwr wrote: post #56
Symbiote wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's data centre in Denmark does this. https://www.ramboll.com/extract-heat-from-data-centres/large...

Is that picture at the top real? It looks like aspirational pre-planning concept art!

I'm not certain, but it looks reasonable for Danish architecture.

I think it's here, but the StreetView photographs are old: https://maps.app.goo.gl/5M9pwoFgqceDXGtk7

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