Thread

Most data centers refusing to say how much water, electricity they use

216 points · 199 comments · Thom2503

stingraycharles · 1790769649 · focus · HN ↗
Playing the devil’s advocate: don’t “freedom of information” laws mostly apply to government agencies? If so, why would a private company provide this information?
I personally believe at the very least the water usage is heavily overblown compared to the agriculture industry. Elecricity is a different issue, and governments should consider reporting requirements or something like that.
Being angry with datacenter providers is not the solution. And they also need to be built somewhere, and that place is probably best where electricity is abundant and/or cheap.
1. n4r9 · 1790771200 · focus · HN ↗
  > the water usage is heavily overblown compared to the agriculture industry
  Data centers tend to concentrate their water usage within urban areas, causing a strain on local resources. The value of their output is much less tangible. Their water consumption scales up around tenfold if you consider the indirect usage from generating the electricity.
  But on the other hand; yes, it would also help enormously if people ate less meat.
  1. kemotep · 1790772079 · focus · HN ↗
    Essentially, telling people to go vegan and get rid of their golf courses is going to piss them off, hence the reaction people have to being told that datacenters are more important than their comfort.
    bayindirh · 1790772637 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not black and white as it looks.
    I'm personally willing to change my life to help the planet and nature in general to the point it doesn't affect my wellbeing (as in health and safety). For me, personally, the problem is not changing per se, but people finding no amount of change enough, always moving the goalposts with "but, what if" clauses.
    The problem with datacenter water use is the state of the water leaving the data center. Agriculture and meat industry can reuse the water multiple times from cleaner to dirtier processes and return it to the nature with reasonable processing.
    The additives used by datacenters in some cases can't be filtered or processed out practically or in economically viable ways, so the water returns back as unusable, esp. if they get water from a body of water and return it with added chemicals the process gets very damaging.
    MC995 · 1790773416 · focus · HN ↗
    > The additives used by datacenters in some cases can't be filtered or processed out practically or in economically viable ways, so the water returns back as unusable, esp. if they get water from a body of water and return it with added chemicals the process gets very damaging.
    Why would any water be returned? Datacenters (and literally every industrial process that requires cooling) use water for evaporative cooling. The water evaporates, then returns as rain elsewhere.
    The only water being "returned" I can think of would be from the intermittent or continuous blowdown systems to maintain TDS levels; but blowdown is a small fraction of the water consumed and is typically returned back via the city sewer system.
    n4r9 · 1790773573 · focus · HN ↗
    Roughly 80% of the water evaporates into the atmosphere. The remaining 20% is flushed out of the system to remove mineral build-ups and sent to local treatment plants.
    BikiniPrince · 1790778183 · focus · HN ↗
    I have yet to see the standardization in that claim. Are there some reliable papers on this topic?
    MC995 · 1790780843 · focus · HN ↗
    It's complicated, and depends on the hardness of the water entering the system from the water supply as well, since blowdown is ultimately to control the level of dissolved solids in the water so it does not contrate enough to start coming out of solution. Rarely if ever is true demineralized water used in open loop cooling systems; it's simply too expensive to produce to then "throw away" into evaporation.
    The previously stated 80/20 isn't a bad general estimate, but it varies depending on the specific site. 10%-25% of makeup water being lost to blowdown is a reasonable range.
    As for papers about it, I was only able to find a few in my brief search, but they don't land on a single number since it depends on the ratio of dissolved minerals/solids in the circulating cooling-tower water compared with the incoming makeup water, which varies due to acceptability for the process and due to the incoming water quality.
    This short PDF on "Mechanical Systems Water Efficiency Management" from the EPA goes over the concepts pretty well though
    - <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-12/documents/ws-commercialbuildings-waterscore-mechanical-systems-guide.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-12/documents/ws...
    This document from the US DOD (UFM 3-230-13, Industrial Water Treatment Operation and Maintenance (2026), Chapter 5) says that most cooling towers operate at 3-10 CoC, with 5-7 CoC identified as a cost-effective range. Where CoC is Cycles of concentration described in the previous PDF, and a higher CoC means less blowdown and better water efficiency, with the trade-off of a greater risk of scaling, corrosion, and biological/water-chemistry problems.
    - <a href="https://www.wbdg.org/FFC/DOD/UFC/ufm_3_230_13_2026.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.wbdg.org/FFC/DOD/UFC/ufm_3_230_13_2026.pdf
    Veolia also has a "Open Recirculating Cooling Systems" handbook that shows some good examples with real numbers in table 31-1.
    - <a href="https://www.watertechnologies.com/handbook/chapter-31-open-recirculating-cooling-systems" rel="nofollow">https://www.watertechnologies.com/handbook/chapter-31-open-r...
    Dylan16807 · 1790774352 · focus · HN ↗
    Additives like what?
    We're talking about water that's released in general use, right? I would expect a closed cooling loop to have some biocides but have almost none of that leave the system.
    And one datacenter had a weird bacteria that one time.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.