"Nationwide, data centers consume a fraction of the water used by golf courses. U.S. data centers account for roughly 3.3% of the total water consumed by golf courses. While golf courses can require hundreds of thousands of gallons daily for irrigation, a data center's footprint is comparatively much smaller and often uses recycled water. "

US household refrigerators use more power, too. 🤔

Edited Sunday at 07:08 AM3 days by martin-w

IBTL 🙂

6 hours ago, martin-w said:

"Nationwide, data centers consume a fraction of the water used by golf courses. U.S. data centers account for roughly 3.3% of the total water consumed by golf courses. While golf courses can require hundreds of thousands of gallons daily for irrigation, a data center's footprint is comparatively much smaller and often uses recycled water. "

US household refrigerators use more power, too. 🤔

That is very interesting and enlightening. I've been reading and watching alarming news about data centers and how they'll consume all our water and electricity, but I'm guessing that a lot of this is exaggerated and hyped.

It used to bother me that golf courses were green and watered daily where I used to live in New Mexico, but water restrictions were common, as the area was a desert with very little surface water and most fresh water coming from deep wells.

Many data centers will have their own power plants, mostly natural gas. I'm guessing that they use closed loop water cooling systems, where cooled water is circulated through pipes and radiators. This does not mean that new, fresh water must be pumped into the system, rather it's the same water recirculated through the system.

My concern is what the data centers will actually be used for.....

Dave

2 hours ago, stans said:

IBTL 🙂

Please try to avoid encouraging certain people to go full censorship crazy because of their personal biases.😉

This is an interesting topic and there's nothing wrong with discussing it in an effort to find the facts.

Dave

Globally, data centres consume less than 1% of total non-household or industrial water use. However, water use varies greatly by location and season; in arid regions, a single large facility can account for up to 10% of a county's entire supply. To offset this, major tech companies are shifting to recycled wastewater. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Aggregate & Relative Water Use

• National Perspective: U.S. data centres consume less than 1% of the water Americans use to water their lawns.

• Global Perspective: The industry represents less than 0.5% of worldwide industrial water use.

• Localised Strain: While aggregate use is small, it can cause severe local pressure. For example, a single Meta data centre in Georgia uses roughly 10% of the county's total water supply, and some AI-heavy data centres in Phoenix require up to 177 million gallons a day. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Direct vs. Indirect Consumption

Data centre water footprints consist of two main categories: [1]

1. Direct Use (Cooling): Up to 85% of the water data centres draw evaporates into the air through evaporative cooling, with large hyperscale facilities consuming anywhere from 1 to 5 million gallons daily. [1, 2]

2. Indirect Use (Power Generation): The largest overall footprint comes from indirect use, as cooling water-hungry power plants (which supply the data centre's electricity) accounts for roughly 60% of total consumption. [1]

Industry Mitigation & PUE/WUE Trends

• Water Usage Efficiency (WUE): The industry standard for measuring efficiency is WUE (Litres of water per kilowatt-hour of energy). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

• Wastewater Switching: Tech giants are heavily investing in reclaimed municipal wastewater to save fresh drinking water. For example, Google and AWS utilize recycled water at several of their hyperscale campuses. [1, 2]

• Net-Positive Goals: Tech leaders have pledged to become "water positive" by 2030, aiming to replenish more fresh water than they consume by investing in local watershed projects.

Seems it's more of a regional and seasonal issue.

I'm guessing that they use closed loop water cooling systems, where cooled water is circulated through pipes and radiators. This does not mean that new, fresh water must be pumped into the system, rather it's the same water recirculated through the system.

Major companies are shifting to recycled wastewater, apparently. And aim to be "water positive" by 2030.

Edited Sunday at 03:15 PM3 days by martin-w

It depends a lot on where they want them to be located. Small towns where they are going to take up a lot of space don't want them. Large urban areas I suppose wouldn't make a lot of difference.

Noel