I wonder if this is newly built/to be built data centers for AI, or ones that previously existed/ are being built for general web infrastructure. The article doesn’t say.
I wonder if this is newly built/to be built data centers for AI, or ones that previously existed/ are being built for general web infrastructure. The article doesn’t say.
The age of the DC doesn’t really matter. Its whether it was designed to be an “open loop” or “closed loop” cooling system. Closed loop DC use surprisingly little water because they capture and recycle it. A fast food restaurant would likely use more water than a closed looped DC. The big offending Datacenters for water use are the Open Loop design. These use massive amounts of water.
Close to me there are two DCs under construction. One is a large colocation DC and is closed loop. The other is a new AWS DC, and it is open loop. So as you can see, age isn’t really the determining factor.
So you’re asking yourself, why use open loop at all? Its energy bill is cheaper! Open loop uses swamp coolers (evaporative cooling) Closed looped requires more electricity for cooling using more traditional phase-change coolant (same as residential air conditioners).
My question was based on the amount of water used by a data center (closed loop) that is used in the closed loop vs used to run the rest of the data center.
In my little bit of searching, I got some stats that suggest that in a closed loop system the closed loop cooling only uses about 25% of the data center’s total usage.
But either way, the take away that some people will take from the article’s title and contents is that these data centers are AI data centers. But non-AI data centers are still being built as more and more people gain Internet access.
This assumption colors how people will take this news and whether it’s “good or bad”.
I wonder if this is newly built/to be built data centers for AI, or ones that previously existed/ are being built for general web infrastructure. The article doesn’t say.
The age of the DC doesn’t really matter. Its whether it was designed to be an “open loop” or “closed loop” cooling system. Closed loop DC use surprisingly little water because they capture and recycle it. A fast food restaurant would likely use more water than a closed looped DC. The big offending Datacenters for water use are the Open Loop design. These use massive amounts of water.
Close to me there are two DCs under construction. One is a large colocation DC and is closed loop. The other is a new AWS DC, and it is open loop. So as you can see, age isn’t really the determining factor.
So you’re asking yourself, why use open loop at all? Its energy bill is cheaper! Open loop uses swamp coolers (evaporative cooling) Closed looped requires more electricity for cooling using more traditional phase-change coolant (same as residential air conditioners).
My question was based on the amount of water used by a data center (closed loop) that is used in the closed loop vs used to run the rest of the data center.
In my little bit of searching, I got some stats that suggest that in a closed loop system the closed loop cooling only uses about 25% of the data center’s total usage.
But either way, the take away that some people will take from the article’s title and contents is that these data centers are AI data centers. But non-AI data centers are still being built as more and more people gain Internet access.
This assumption colors how people will take this news and whether it’s “good or bad”.