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Comment by mrb

3 hours ago

Yes. As another comparison point, 13 million gallons per year amounts to 24 gallons per minute which is about 5 (five) bathtub faucets running 24/7/365.

The water bill alone would be only $100k/yr assuming average US domestic rate of $8 per 1000 gallons.

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mrb

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rtpg  9 minutes ago

Median US household water usage is 130 gallons per day according to Wiki.[0]

So ~280 households worth of water? Though the US seems to be on the high end, using 3x more than Japan and 4x more than France (according to a random website)[1]

To state the obvious most people are not running big faucets all the time, and in fact are using way less.

It seems like a bit of a self-own to not just use household or per-capita usage here to prove a point though.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_water_use_in_the_U... [1]: https://www.worldometers.info/water/

quietsegfault  2 hours ago

My state's gasoline refineries use about ~13 million gallons of water each day. It's about .7 gallons of water per gallon of gasoline refined.

alpaca128  1 hour ago

So a system to recirculate the same 24 gallons per minute would be more expensive than $100k per year for water?

  • Groxx  9 minutes ago

    Condensing the steam back into water would undo the cooling power, so yes. Massively less efficient. Negative efficiency, as required by thermodynamics.

    Your only gains would come from whatever increased surface area the system has, radiating energy however it can. But a radiator without any water involved would be as good or better. Air-cooled datacenters do exist, they're just trading other costs and usually can't release as much heat.

bix6  3 hours ago

Remind me median income?

  • Dylan16807  1 hour ago

    $87k household. So that's 6 median incomes of water being used up by that datacenter. Put that way it doesn't sound bad, especially when you glance at the electric bill.

    Also when it evaporates instead of going to the sewer that drops the price in half.

    Edit: Oops I got that mixed up and was treating it like a per-faucet cost. So actually it's one full household income converted into water to handle the entire facility.