Comment by aliasxneo
2 hours ago
I lived in a smaller rural town near a Google datacenter. During my career there I had routinely come across some outlandish accusations made about our water/power usage from the locals. But for obvious reasons I could never dispute them. I remember we hired a local who'd grown up in the town and he was "really surprised" when he started to see what we were doing to remain efficient.
The current data center craze just feels like the same thing but on a bigger scale.
> The current data center craze just feels like the same thing but on a bigger scale.
At a large enough scale, it doesn't matter how efficient you are - you're still causing a more damage than the region or the world can take.
The current hysteria has little to do with datacenters and a lot to do with societal unrest about AI.
Also the unforced error around NDAs and attempts at bypassing environmental and other reviews. People don’t like the idea of their local elected officials bypassing the rules in the dark.
I understand these companies want to move fast, but this seems to be one of those cases where going slow gets you there faster.
>People don’t like the idea of their local elected officials bypassing the rules in the dark.
Others don't like technological progress to be reduced to the speed of bureaucracies who have no compelling incentive to be particularly efficient. Especially when the technology at hand might end up making quite a few of these bureaucracies much less staffed.
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I live in northern va and I can tell you that histeria is about ballooning electric and other bills. vast majority of population is unfortunately “not there” in regards to any unrest about AI
Those reasons aren’t obvious to me. Why not just be transparent if that’s the case?
Google considers pretty much everything in hwops to be a trade secret. The point is to keep the specifics unknown as much as possible from competitors; the public at large's knowledge is just collateral damage in that fight.
What benefit could competitors get from that information?
If they are so good at it, they should push to make that the bare minimum and get to hold all future datacenter permits.
Yep - better off redacting the great efficiencies we’re doing.
My biggest problem with the data centers getting built around me are that they are building new natural gas power plants to power them, that will be greenhouse gases and decrease local air quality. I would be a lot more ok with it if they were using wind or solar. And maybe built it somewhere that didn't have a water shortage.
Did your datacenter consume 9GW?
I get it, a lot of the older data centers consumed relatively little power. More than nothing but manageable like 1 or 2MW.
The reason for the "craze" is that the AI datacenters being built are monstrosities that consume way more power, an order of magnitude or more. And a lot of them are going up.
> Did your datacenter consume 9GW?
I think the largest data centers consume about 1 GW.
https://www.enconnex.com/data-center-energy-consumption-and-...
https://techplustrends.com/1gw-data-center-power-consumption...
> I think the largest data centers consume about 1 GW.
The largest AI datacenters. And there are multiple planned that consume beyond 1 GW. In particular, I'm referring to the box elder county data center which I believe is one of the largest planned. [1]
Prior to these AI datacenters, 100MW would have been considered an extremely large amount of power for a single datacenter.
But also, 1GW is a huge amount of power. More than a lot of states use, and not the really small ones like Wyoming. Just for reference, steel mills use 40MW and there's about 8 of them in the US.
1GW is an absurd amount of power to consume.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-...
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> But for obvious reasons I could never dispute them.
I'm sorry, I never worked in a data center nor lived near one, what's the obvious reason you couldn't dispute them? My only guess would be that Google really wanted to keep the amount of usage secret, but that'd only make sense if it was higher than expected not lower.
Google never wanted to share details about their datacenters because they thought (think?) their power efficiency was a competitive advantage. So it'd be lower than you expect.
Also, they didn't want you to be able to guesstimate how many machines / computing power they had, for similar reasons.
Right, they're so power efficient they don't want to tell the people around them how little water they consume or "not consume"?
People complain about new data center slurping up all local water and then neither Google nor representatives can say "No, actually we're not, here is the numbers", because Google doesn't want their competitors to guess how many machines they have in one of their data center? I'm sorry but that sounds very far-fetched, must be another reason parent wrote it was "obvious" they couldn't divulge how little/much water the place uses.
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Along those lines just a reminder folks, China is installing about 1GW equivalent of Solar power per day [1]. Lot of Australians can simply stop paying for power now due to free power on offer and batteries [2]. These are not zero-regulation, socialist wastelands.
All this whinging about "is this project using too much power or not" is pointless scarcity that we've chosen to partake in. If we are to create and spend political capital via hyper-focussing on a single issue, perhaps we should use it to fix this instead?
[1]: https://reneweconomy.com.au/just-staggering-china-installs-1...
[2]:https://www.energy.gov.au/rebates/solar-sharer-offer
Hmmm, which political party is famously against solar and renewables in general?
The same one that is paying for their support for data centers and is shifting as a response [1]. Like I said, if political capital is being spent shifting peoples' stances, how much of a waste is it to know we could move them on this and we chose not to. Generational fumble.
[1]: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/6121776-gop-worried-data...
China are also building tons of coal plants.
What about water usage?
For most datacenters the actual largest source of water use is indirectly from power generation (coal, nat gas). Solar reduces that a lot also.
Funny how nobody asks the folks who build golf courses "what about water usage?"
hint: An individual 18-hole course uses between 300,000 to 1 million gallons per day
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The water isn’t actually used. It is slightly warmed.
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Most data centers are closed loop systems, they circulate the water over and over again.
You understand, the water isn't used up? It's not even used up in agriculture. Even when you drink a glass of water, the water doesn't actually disappear, soon someone else will be drinking it. The same water that was on the earth when the dinosaurs walked the planet is still on the earth today. No need to panic about someone using water.
The only reason to be concerned is if someone is mixing the water with other chemicals at a rate faster than the natural filtration and then not paying for the treatment to purify the water again. But that is not an issue with data centers. Merely using water is a concern only for people who don't understand how matter is preserved, but a school physics book should dispel those concerns.
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It is worth remembering that it heavily depends on cooling system involved.
Traditional data centers have far smaller power density per rack and thus cooling requirements than AI datacenters; if you can use closed loop system without evaporation, water usage is very small. Difference is around order of magnitude
But if you want to fit maximum amount of compute in the space and need to dissipate it, evaporative based system will be far more effective space wise; especially if also for some reason you built it in hot place, rather than somewhere in the north
I've been spending some time in Tasmania, Aus for the last few weeks and have been following the local debate regarding 3 data centres Firmus is planning on building here.
While on the surface, the proposals sound very efficient and low impact, as always the devil is in the details.
Standard operation would use closed loop cooling, relying on rooftop rain water to keep the loops topped up. However, the company has acknowledged that when ambient temperatures rise above a certain level (26C), they would need to switch to evaporative cooling.
The contract with the government also has a section where the company requires a connection to the state agricultural water supply as a backup [1].
When rainfall is plentiful and temperatures are low, as they often are in tasmania, everything is rosy.
However the state does experience periods of draught and thats where things get sketchy. Conflicts are likely to arise when a large investor in the states economy wants to start draining the local water supply to keep ai agents running at a time when crops and livestock are competing for the same resources.
Similar issues would arise regarding power. Firmus is proposing to underwrite an expansion of the states already extensive Hydro power network, but for that investment they would very likely expect priority access to the grid when supplies start running low.
[1] https://www.tasmaniancountry.com/newspaper/tasmanian-country...
Ok and? This wouldn’t be an issue if google et al would just share the numbers instead of hiding behind NDAs and whatever else.
Are you sure? People think water for data centers is "consumed", like the output is sewage or something. Giving those people concrete numbers is not gonna change such misconceptions (and that's assuming they look at such numbers in reasonable relative terms in the first place).
The majority of current large data centers use open-loop evaporative water cooling which does in fact consume water.
Most of the consumer water is evaporated but that leaves behind dissolved solids and minerals and so some of the water is used to clean that out. That water also often contains additives like biocides, anti-scale agents, and corrosion inhibitors.
This water is discharged into the sewer system or to municipal wastewater treatment facilities.
Here's an article on the various ways data centers can be cooled and what effect each has on water usage [1].
[1] https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275...
Seems easy enough to report multiple numbers and be clear on what water comes in (can even separate initial filling/construction from ongoing usage) vs what gets lost and what comes out as waste. I think people can understand this and it isn't a good enough reason to not share the numbers.
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It is consumed because they evaporate it away and remove it from the local environment.
They easily could build near heating system or cooling the water down in another probably big facility close by and send it to the city
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Fair point. But if I had initially learned that google was putting data centers in and it recycled water and it was a minor amount I would be more receptive than hearing that google is bullying communities and hiding details behind NDAs.
> Are you sure? People think water for data centers is "consumed", like the output is sewage or something.
Right, isn't that what sharing the information is about to show, that it isn't consumed? Show how much water they're adding to the ecosystem, since I'm guessing they'd have numbers on that, if that's how it works.
Not sure why this is being downvoted. If you noticeably distort the local economy then people are naturally going to want to know what resources you're consuming.
but trade secrets
I think all data centers and other industrial concerns above a certain size should have to publish that.
The irony is that it is unlikely datacenters would hit that "above a certain size"
The hysteria always gives datacenter usage numbers in a vacuum, never a comparison, for good reason; we might have to start protesting golf courses and paper mills instead.
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Industrial use should never get to hide. It’s such impactful use so every aspect should be scrutinized.
You have some very motivated people with deep pockets who do not like negative press. Say anything negative and the downvotes will roll in.
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> I had routinely come across some outlandish accusations made about our water/power usage from the locals. But for obvious reasons I could never dispute them.
It'd be pretty easy for the company to dispel those outlandish accusations - the PR department could just report the true numbers.
Worth considering in the current climate. My impression a while ago is that the exact water and power usage of any large company's data center is seen as a trade secret of sorts; if a large company invested to become XX% efficient, it might not want competitors to know it hit a certain efficiency target.
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They do! In great detail:
https://sustainability.google/files/1699a2e19277e478b38a659f...
The data tables start on p. 90.
Sam Altman has stated the water usage in multiple interviews (it's low) and people don't believe him.
That’s because he’s a known liar. Like he’s famous for his sociopathic lying even amongst sociopathic lying billionaires. Impressive almost.
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Largely because of how many times it could have been stated prior, given it had been a talking point for some time, and the lack of actual evidence (him saying something is not often taken at face value…).
Of course, they'd like the water thing to stay an issue as it distracts from others. The water problem has been concentrated on because even some of the most adherent climate change deniers recognise that water access is a significant problem in many areas, so it is an issue that can be usefully raised and won't get tied up in the human-caused-climate-change argument. Unfortunately concentrating on that could be distracting from other matters.
That would not be good PR because a) it would be seen as flippant and b) no one would believe Google.
Both things happened when Sam Altman blogged about how much water the median ChatGPT query used.
Data centers tend to be higher security facilities for a reason. Publicizing any of their technical specs isn’t really beneficial, especially when any numbers that are provided will be dismissed unless even more information is provided to back them up.
Effectively no reward at any risk level, regardless of whether one agrees if there is actually any risk.
Absurd! every company ever would love to hide behind these same excuses.
If they are using over a certain percent of any public utility (and yes ALL utilities are public) the utility should force it to be disclosed.
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How does hiding water usage protect the facility exactly?
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It’s not high security if everyone is mandated to do it. Power consumption, energy sources, water usage for coolant, waste water treatment plan, etc.
I think the disinformation is people thinking that data centers directly use vast quantities of water. What happens is the power use stresses water supplies in local areas.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter-a...
Google has some custom hardware, so directly reporting it could be an issue.
Now that it has been, though…
it's interesting how much this sounds like astroturf.
> it's interesting how much this sounds like astroturf.
It is also interesting how much the anti-datacenter panic sounds like astroturf.
And who exactly would they be astroturfing for?
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LinkedIn CV says 8 Years working for google as a Data Center Facilities Technician, so. Yeah.
Not necessarily astroturfed but definitely biased.
Biased, or well informed?
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Also outright dishonest to not add that as a disclaimer!
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