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Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

356 points · 458 comments · sensanaty

aliasxneo · 1791145670 · focus · HN ↗
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.
1. cogman10 · 1791149243 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
  1. T-A · 1791150077 · focus · HN ↗
    > Did your datacenter consume 9GW?
    I think the largest data centers consume about 1 GW.
    <a href="https://www.enconnex.com/data-center-energy-consumption-and-power-sources/" rel="nofollow">https://www.enconnex.com/data-center-energy-consumption-and-...
    <a href="https://techplustrends.com/1gw-data-center-power-consumption-guide/" rel="nofollow">https://techplustrends.com/1gw-data-center-power-consumption...
    cogman10 · 1791150687 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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] <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-gw-utah-data-center-campus-approved" rel="nofollow">https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-...
    LaurensBER · 1791151316 · focus · HN ↗
    > 1GW of power datacenters, more efficient GPUs, more efficient training, Xiaomi/Deepseek disk based caching + other efficiency gains.
    I haven't done the math but if I see how many tokens I can burn per month for 100 USD it's pretty mind boggling to imagine how much capacity is being added by this build out.
    This is not the place to discuss it but even in my wildest predictions I find it hard to imagine that we're really going to need all this capacity anytime soon (although I guess anything spare can go into training).
    rocqua · 1791152478 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s not ‘spare goes to training’. These data centres are training first. Inference is really rather efficient, so not why datacenters are so big.
    verdverm · 1791152628 · focus · HN ↗
    If we printed electricity like China, this would not be an issue, we can have more electricity at lower prices when we're ready
    <a href="https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/09/03/chinas-solar-capacity-hits-1-28-tw-accounts-for-31-5-of-total-power-capacity/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/09/03/chinas-solar-capacity...
    timr · 1791153411 · focus · HN ↗
    > But also, 1GW is a huge amount of power. More than a lot of states use
    Not even close to a true statement.
    EIA says that the lowest electricity use by state in 2024 was Vermont, at 5.5B kwh. That’s about 0.6GW, if you assume continuous uniform use. By the time you get to #48 (Hawaii) you’re over the 1GW mark [1].
    According to the EIA, US utility-scale generation capacity in 2025 was 1.3 million megawatts [2], so assuming that these new 1GW datacenters were on the public grid, they would each consume about 1/1300th of the 2025 supply. Not nothing, but not nearly the dramatic impact that you’re suggesting.
    For perspective, the Grand Coulee Dam has a generating capacity of about 7,000MW. Robert Moses dam in Niagara Falls does about 2,700MW.
    [1] <a href="https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/sep_sum/html/rank_es_capita.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/...
    [2] <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
    cogman10 · 1791154148 · focus · HN ↗
    Fine, an exaggeration but not off by much.
    If the Box Elder datacenter were a state it'd rank #19 in terms of power consumption (78 TWh).
    It is correct to say these massive data centers will represent a significant percentage of US power consumption when built out.
    [deleted] · 1791154775 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    timr · 1791155125 · focus · HN ↗
    Okay. And? Data centers are aggregating the demand of nationwide consumption. They’re big because that’s what it takes to be efficient.
    Attacking them for size is a bit like saying that freight trains are bad because they’re heavy.
    crtified · 1791157557 · focus · HN ↗
    It seems like the size criticism is one of proportionality-of-effect (in various domains such as energy usage, utility costs to citizens, and environmental effects upon water supplies and quality, land usage, noise pollution etc) upon the given locales in which they are proposed to be centralised.
    [deleted] · 1791170617 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    cogman10 · 1791160245 · focus · HN ↗
    > They’re big because that’s what it takes to be efficient.
    Efficient how? Efficiency is a meaningless term without a metric attached. A train is efficient in terms of CO2 used per kg transported, it's not efficient in terms of time to transport.
    > Attacking them for size
    I didn't attack them for size, I attacked them for energy consumption. And that has multiple knock on effects. From climate change (since a lot of these data centers are being powered by natural gas), to local air pollution, to increased local and regional energy prices. If you are consuming 9GW of natural gas that's 9GW worth of physical gas that's been consumed. Increased demand == higher prices for anything that uses natural gas, heating and power generation come to mind.
    I don't care so much if a data center is huge, what I care about is the resources it consumes to operate. Similar to how I don't care how time efficient a private jet is for the wealthy to fly on. I care more about of CO2 inefficient private jets are.
    timr · 1791170048 · focus · HN ↗
    > Efficient how? Efficiency is a meaningless term without a metric attached.
    <a href="https://datacenters.google/efficiency/" rel="nofollow">https://datacenters.google/efficiency/
  2. lokar · 1791154406 · focus · HN ↗
    There were certainly 1GW DCs in the US 10+ years ago.
    cogman10 · 1791154882 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you have any in mind? How many?
    Given the current power consumption of states, I find it hard to believe.
    lokar · 1791155010 · focus · HN ↗
    I remember one in the Midwest was growing past that.
    Even for smaller sites, 1-2 MW would have been very small.
    epistasis · 1791159044 · focus · HN ↗
    1-2MW is like one or two rows of older non-GPU machines, it can't be called a DC.
    kube-system · 1791169994 · focus · HN ↗
    That's what many data centers look like for a mid/large non-tech company that in-houses their datacenter operations. They're often otherwise a "real" datacenter with UPS, backup generators, multiple tier-1 carriers, chillers, raised floors /w hot/cold aisles, etc.
    You see it less now since the shift to the cloud, but in the 00s this stuff was everywhere.
  3. aftbit · 1791155477 · focus · HN ↗
    >However, using a computer cursor to highlight the redacted text box in the report to DWEE, then copying and pasting it into a separate document reveals that Agate LLC is reporting 52.65 megawatts of electricity during peak electrical demand and 13.299 megagallons of water between cooling towers, evaporative systems and site operations in the last year. That totals out to 13 million gallons of water.
    The data center discussed in the article allegedly consumed 53 MW peak and 13 megagallons of water over a year.
  4. dipierro · 1791156173 · focus · HN ↗
    I don’t think that 1MW is something older datacenters consumed. Unless you are talking about a single rack in a corporate server room.
    It is a monthly consumption of a poorly insulated house with air conditioning running 24/7. Or around 1344 W of constant consumption.
    Older DCs relied on much less efficient compute and cooling, and the only reason why their power usage could be less is simply much smaller scale.
    [deleted] · 1791159560 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    crote · 1791159593 · focus · HN ↗
    You're confusing MW with MWh. Older DCs did indeed consume on the order of 1MW of continuous power, like the one at [0]. The 2012-dated DC at [1] has a redundant 22kW power feed per 42U rack, so that's ~500W per RU - which for most pre-AI servers was plenty.
    With hyperscalers it of course went a bit beyond that due to the sheer number of racks, but 100MW would've been considered huge.
    [0]: <a href="https://www.northcdatacenters.com/en/northc-datacenters/delft/" rel="nofollow">https://www.northcdatacenters.com/en/northc-datacenters/delf...
    [1]: <a href="https://www.eurofiber.com/en-nl/data-centers-netherlands/data-center-utrecht-1" rel="nofollow">https://www.eurofiber.com/en-nl/data-centers-netherlands/dat...
    cogman10 · 1791159635 · focus · HN ↗
    You are confusing MW with MWh and apparently kWh.
    A single rack in a corporate server room consumes on the order of 10 to 20kW.
    1MWh happens when you run a 1MW load for 1 hour. There are 1000 kWh in 1MWh and 1000 Wh in 1 kWh.
    A home with 1344W of constant consumption would consume 32kWh per day.

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