The water is definitely consumed by most AI data centers, and Lutnik is either an idiot or he knows that, and he’s lying. Okay, he’s lying.
AI Data centers are enormous consumers of electricity to feed the chip boards, so many use evaporative water cooling systems that only need around 50% less electricity than standard air conditioning. Evaporative cooling consumes millions of gallons of municipal water, because up to 85% of it evaporates into the air.
There are experiments with closed loop cooling that may help, but with the rush to build data centers ASAP, most of them are using the quick and dirty methods like on-site “behind the grid” gas generators for electricity and evaporative cooling systems that need massive amounts of water.
When the water goes through the data center cooling system and becomes toxic, it goes right back into the environment via water resources like rivers, lakes etc. One of the on hold data centers here asked the sewer district if they could run it through them and MSD (sewer district) said it would need lots of infrastructure upgrades that of course will cost local tax payers lots of money to build out and the data center won’t be paying for any of that.
I have yet to see any benefit at all for local communities rural or urban with these data centers. Rural areas that grow our food are not happy at all with data centers sucking up all the fresh water and poisoning the water resources farmers use. And if there is a drought? Then what happens?
WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday voted down a proposed constitutional amendment to keep the Supreme Court at nine seats, with the measure falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass.
The vote tally was 212-206. Almost every Democrat voted against it, as openness within the party grows for expanding the high court by four seats.
By “closed loop,” are you referring to geothermal heating and cooling and to things like our mini-split, which heats and cools in a closed system that, when cooling, doesn’t even generate heat? (I’m in love with our new mini-split.)
For data center closed loop cooling, the best analogy is probably how water cools your car engine. Water circulates in closed channels surrounding the hot engine to the radiator in the front of the car, with a big fan that cools the water as it flows through the radiator. Oracle claims to be using closed loop cooling for at least one of its data centers, although I don’t know if it’s up and running or just planned.
The drawback compared to evaporative cooling is that it needs more electricity to run the fans and radiators, and in hot enough local climates it may use electric chillers to cool the water. So the tradeoff is more air pollution if the center is using its own gas-fired “behind the meter” power. But it is very water efficient.
There really isn’t enough room at Mar-a-Lago to turn it into a data center and his billionaire neighbors would object. He could turn the Trump National Doral Golf course into one. That’s pretty close to Mar-a-lago. .
There’s room. Since Trump hates windmills, but looooves datacenters, they could locate one just offshore from MAL’s private beach. It could even use seawater for cooling. But, hey, natural gas turbines work too. They’ll even blast out the high-pitched, whining sound of “progress.” Maybe it could double as a meme-coin crypto miner while were at it. Winning!
