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US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

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Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#91

Post by zug_zug »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #84
zug_zug wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the thing with the livestock is that you have to give a cow water. Datacenters do not need water . It is just slightly cheaper for them than cooling with electricity. Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption, and ideally in a way where it isn't a ghastly eyesore.

You don't need a law to force people to pay for resources they consume; basic economics already ensures that. If there are externalities not already accounted for by that (increased demand for water/electricity driving up costs for others, noise, "eyesores", etc.) you could pass laws to ensure those costs are paid by the responsible party but that's not a datacenter-specific issue.

Don't quote theoretical econ idealism at us when our actual electricity rates are going up 20% or more per year.

Increased demand absolutely DOES increase the cost both in theory and practice.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#92

Post by KennyBlanken »

utopiah wrote: post #61
delichon wrote: post #58

Support for data centers jumps a net 31 points after voters are told modern facilities can reuse the same cooling water for up to 10 years, new poll finds. -- https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2092209623583404461 https://www.raineycenter.org/polling/data-centers-voters-are... For a closed loop cooling project: Fluid renewal occurs only every 7–15 years and is performed in a fully contained process that meets state and…

> modern facilities can reuse Can, but do they? Feels a bit like Musk's Colossus that "could" use nuclear power but has been running on "temporary" natural-gas turbines for years now.

Nope, because dry cooling uses much more power. Latent heat of evaporation is "free" work.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#93

Post by citrin_ru »

zug_zug wrote: post #65
wraptile wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Livestock: ~730 billion gal This is a good illustration how cursed the datacenter topic has become when people go out of their minds on computer cooling while continuing to eat meat which lets be perfectly clear - is mostly for entertainment purposes. I had someone berate me for defending datacenter water use and their last post was literally a cheese burger.

Well the thing with the livestock is that you have to give a cow water. Datacenters do not need water . It is just slightly cheaper for them than cooling with electricity. Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption, and ideally in a way where it isn't a ghastly eyesore.

> Datacenters do not need water. It is just slightly cheaper for them than cooling with electricity.

As long as electricity at least partially produced using fossil fuel I would prefer data-centers to use as little electricity as possible. There are regions which are getting plenty of rainfall on average (which can be collected and stored) or were getting some water from rivers will have negligible ecological impact.

But currently DC operators have little incentives to choose DC location based on outdoor temperature or water availability and there are plenty of DCs in hot and arid regions.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#94

Post by Ajedi32 »

zug_zug wrote: post #91
Ajedi32 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a law to force people to pay for resources they consume; basic economics already ensures that. If there are externalities not already accounted for by that (increased demand for water/electricity driving up costs for others, noise, "eyesores", etc.) you could pass laws to ensure those costs are paid by the responsible party but that's not a datacenter-specific issue.

Don't quote theoretical econ idealism at us when our actual electricity rates are going up 20% or more per year. Increased demand absolutely DOES increase the cost both in theory and practice.

I... agree? Did you even read the comment you replied to?

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#95

Post by paroneayea »

thevinter wrote: post #13

Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing big numbers without any point of reference is pointless. Annual withdrawals (2015) - Thermoelectric power: ~48.5 trillion gal - Irrigation: ~43.1 trillion gal - Public supply: ~14.2 trillion gal - Self-supplied industrial: ~5.4 trillion gal - Aquaculture: ~2.76…

The report says that water consumption tripled due to AI datacenters, in 2023! Most of it was on electricity generation to support the datacenters.

But that's tripled of water use across all sectors due to datacenter buildout. So no "comparison" to other uses is needed.

EDIT: Ah, I did misread it. Sorry!

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#96

Post by [deleted] »

zug_zug wrote: post #67
KennyBlanken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what led you to believe that the water is being put back into the ground "simply" or otherwise but maybe you shouldn't be acting like it's a non-issue when you clearly don't understand the problem. DCs are pumping the water through evaporative cooling towers because the latent heat of vaporizaton means there's a huge amount of heat sucked up in the phase change from liquid to vapor. None of the water is…

No I'm saying that water used in mining likely goes back into the ground.

[deleted]

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#97

Post by tyjen »

avalys wrote: post #6

This is a manufactured propaganda issue by dishonest and/or innumerate people. However, can’t data centers just use closed-loop cooling and avoid this whole thing? With all the money going into AI, it’s hard to imagine it being prohibitively costly.

I don't even know who owns forgeeks.net. They're only a couple months old and is disseminated by a new HN account. Some of the "author" social media links appear AI generated.

Red flags galore. Wouldn't surprise me if it was bankrolled by bad actors and/or a website created/operated by AI agents.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#98

Post by ben_w »

zug_zug wrote: post #65
wraptile wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Livestock: ~730 billion gal This is a good illustration how cursed the datacenter topic has become when people go out of their minds on computer cooling while continuing to eat meat which lets be perfectly clear - is mostly for entertainment purposes. I had someone berate me for defending datacenter water use and their last post was literally a cheese burger.

Well the thing with the livestock is that you have to give a cow water. Datacenters do not need water . It is just slightly cheaper for them than cooling with electricity. Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption, and ideally in a way where it isn't a ghastly eyesore.

While I agree fully with this part:

> Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption, and ideally in a way where it isn't a ghastly eyesore.

Fact is, almost nobody "needs" meat in their diet, and even if all meat eaters did actually need it rather than merely want it, there are meats which use less than the average quantity of water.

From the above stats, the mean American's loss of water due to unnecessary use of water for unnecessary meat raised in their territory, is about 43 times the mean American's loss of water due to the unnecessary water use of datacenters that are in their territory.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#99

Post by patwolf »

thevinter wrote: post #13

Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing big numbers without any point of reference is pointless. Annual withdrawals (2015) - Thermoelectric power: ~48.5 trillion gal - Irrigation: ~43.1 trillion gal - Public supply: ~14.2 trillion gal - Self-supplied industrial: ~5.4 trillion gal - Aquaculture: ~2.76…

Nice perspective. So even if all these data centers were built in the desert, it's entirely within the realm of possibility to transport 17B gallons of water, unlike the 43 trillion used for irrigation. Some back-of-the-napkin math:

- A truck holds 5000 gallons

- It would take 3.5 million trips to transport that much

- If each trip was 500 miles roundtrip, that's about 2 billion miles

- Trucks travel 140 billion miles each year in the US. That would add less than 2% to the total miles

- The trucking industry is about $1 trillion in revenue per year. So 2% of that is $20 billion total to transport 17 billion gallons. Or around $1 per gallon.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#100

Post by antisthenes »

imglorp wrote: post #53

Is anybody working on using all this waste heat for desalination? I think cold seawater can be used for the external loop, through a heat exchanger where it would meet the heated pure water from the internal cooling loops. This would cause evaporation of the salt water which could be captured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Multi-stage_flash...

That would require building data centers next to where salt water is or energy used for pumping will eat any savings from using waste heat.
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