Comment by password4321
2 days ago
I would like to know how much water is taken by a datacenter vs. the same size space of apartments. I can see why it could be considered a bad choice for communities long term if a datacenter takes more.
2 days ago
I would like to know how much water is taken by a datacenter vs. the same size space of apartments. I can see why it could be considered a bad choice for communities long term if a datacenter takes more.
The government in The Dalles, Oregon were suing local newspapers that were questioning Google's water usage in the city:
https://www.rcfp.org/dalles-google-oregonian-settlement/
Apparently Google uses nearly 30% of the city's water supply:
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-wa...
I highly doubt any apartment block comes close to taking 30% of a city's water supply.
I’ve driven through The Dalles. It’s a very small town. A search shows a population of 15,000 and declining annually.
It’s also right on a big river. The article you linked said that Google was spending nearly $30 million to improve the city’s water infrastructure so there are no problems.
Talking about this in terms of percentages of a small town’s water supply while ignoring the fact that the city is literally on a giant river and Google is paying for the water infrastructure is misleading.
2/3rds of new data centers are built in areas of existing water scarcity.
The question was water spendinf per square meters compared to household. That question was answered and does not depend on proximity to river.
That's because it's a large industry and nobody lives there. This pattern appears all over the place. The paper mills in the pacific northwest consume large multiples of the water used by their little towns.
That's not the point, the question was whether an apartment building would use the same amount of water and clearly an apartment would consume substantially less water.
3 replies →
Some quick napkin math using averages (data center designs vary). One of Google's larger and thirstier data centers, in Oklahoma, is said to use 833 million gallons per year (that's about 2500 acre-feet, in useful terms). It occupies about 250 acres, most of which looks to be parking lots but whatever. The number of households that can be supported on 1 acre-foot per year ranges from 2 to 6 depending (Las Vegas on one end, San Francisco on the other).
You said apartments specifically and this urban form usually starts at 50 dwellings per acre, minimum, which would lead me to say the apartments use more water. The break-even point in this equation is 2-5 households per acre.
Apples and oranges, you can compare the water usage, but places for people to live aren't in the same category as datacenters.
Yes they are. Both can be built in areas with abundant water supply.