Thread

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. BearOso · 1791154950 · focus · HN ↗
  The disparity is that older data centers were for storing and serving data. They have a lot of bandwidth and storage, but aren't consuming much energy. Plus, they are there to provide quicker access to data, to provide a service to actual people.
  New AI data centers are obviously compute-oriented instead. That means they consume a lot more power, like hundreds of megawatts. For perspective, on average a U.S. household uses only 1.2KW. Because of this, cooling needs are significantly increased, and while water usage is often overblown, noise volume is a major problem. At (edit) 10m, it often exceeds the 90dB threshold for hearing loss.
  Then there's the fact that millions of dollars of GPUs are inside these things, so security means lots of bright lights at all times of day.
  These are just problems with the physical presence of a data center, not to mention the electric bill hikes, land value loss, environmental effects, etc. And there's no obvious positives to one going up. No new jobs. No tax money because it's often elided with incentives from bribing local officials.
  With all the negatives and seemingly no benefits, ask yourself who wants these data centers, and why? If the only way to improve AI is using more and more compute like this, what is the end-game?
  1. Lucasoato · 1791157708 · focus · HN ↗
    > At 100m, it often exceeds the 90dB threshold for hearing loss
    Are you serious? Is there any data for this? This would make the whole area unlivable
    [deleted] · 1791159327 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    snaking0776 · 1791159649 · focus · HN ↗
    I don’t find this wholly convincing since it’s a smaller scale search but there does seem to be some truth to noise issues: <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo also some data here which seems to support OP during generator tests: <a href="https://www.lsars.com/data-center-noise" rel="nofollow">https://www.lsars.com/data-center-noise
    perching_aix · 1791161156 · focus · HN ↗
    I gave this half an hour video the first 10 minutes. He
    - explicitly only wanted to eval the infrasound noise burden, which is not what the guy above was referring to here (the human audible noise burden; not that this would be pointless to check)
    - played back a recording where the car door slamming was way louder than ambient
    - showed that the place is pretty far away from residential areas
    - did not actually confirm the source of the infrasound he did record
    - did not disclose the actual dB SPL figures measured
    - kept derailing to talk about other things he finds objectionable, to the extent that it felt like more time was spent on those than on the actual subject of the video.
    If the remaining 20 minutes are like this too, then I'm not sure he's a reliable narrator or that this is actually valuable research, at least in this context.
    JimDabell · 1791183018 · focus · HN ↗
    The video is nonsense. There’s an article that takes it down in detail here:
    <a href="https://blog.andymasley.com/p/contra-benn-jordan-data-center-and" rel="nofollow">https://blog.andymasley.com/p/contra-benn-jordan-data-center...
  2. tomr75 · 1791157804 · focus · HN ↗
    do you have data on no new jobs/tax revenue?
    BobbyTables2 · 1791158398 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m under the impression that most data centers have very few staff on site, almost zero.
    Sure, some temporary jobs during construction, but I bet it’s nothing like a retail store or factory in operation…
    As for taxable revenue, how does that help the community beyond property tax assessments?
    crote · 1791158606 · focus · HN ↗
    Look at your local megascale datacenter on Google Maps satellite view. How many parking spots does it have? How many of those parking spots are occupied? Are you seeing hundreds of cars, or is it just the mandatory pair of security guards and maybe a remote hands technician or three?
    The tax breaks are well-established in the media, see for example [0].
    jiggawatts · 1791159173 · focus · HN ↗
    The taxable income is generated remotely from the location of the physical data centre.
    That’s the root of the problem.
    Even if the data centre raises billions in revenue and pays billions in taxes, that isn’t paid to any government entity close to where the building is.
    The locals get replaced by machines, the revenue is pocketed far away.
    It’s the equivalent of big mining companies “investing” into mine automation in some developing country. The locals do not benefit!
    expedition32 · 1791169188 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah I am going to be honest if Google was a Dutch company they would bulldoze houses for them. They do it for ASML. But it is an American company and nobody likes them. The Netherlands, for all it's faults, is still too dignified to become a US colony.
    RavuAlHemio · 1791182339 · focus · HN ↗
    >They do it for ASML.
    Who then refuse to sell their machines to anyone except some Taiwanese company.
    Forgeties79 · 1791161432 · focus · HN ↗
    You can’t collect tax revenue by giving away tax breaks worth almost the entirety of the taxes that would otherwise be collected. This is particularly common in the the gulf south - see Louisiana with Hyperion, which also has been an absolute disaster of a construction project (deaths, school can’t operate, all kinds of violations and damage) and is estimated to produce double digit jobs.
  3. goodmythical · 1791158172 · focus · HN ↗
    >For perspective, on average a U.S. household uses only 1.2KW.
    This is always kind of funny to me. How's an average US house supposed to provide context for industrial compute?
    How much energy does a car factory use? What about a chip fab? A hospital? A battery manufacturer?
    What about an apartment of the same physical dimensions as the proposed "data" center?
    Any of those measurements would provide meaningful context that would allow the audience to decide what they'd like built in that space if energy consumption is a concern of theirs.
    Comparing a multi-million dollar server farm almost deliberately designed to turn electrons into dollars to a US house usually designed to require as little electricity as possible provides...well I can't decide if it's zero or next to zero context. Like, sure, that power powers say thousands of homes, but my own home consumes more energy than is really required to keep me alive. If the concern is efficiency, I'd be just as inclined to abolish new freestanding homes in favor of efficient apartment complexes as I would be to disfavor a data center over a neighborhood. But those up in arms about data center power consumption are not also rallying for fewer lawns, so the argument can't be purely about power consumption.
    >With all the negatives and seemingly no benefits, ask yourself who wants these data centers, and why?
    What do you mean no benefits? Do you think local governments are signing these contracts and listening to their constituents yelling at them for the fun of it? The company building it profits from compute contracts. The device mfgs profit from purchasing agreements. The city with the land profits via both legitimate and alleged payments from the corp building the center. To suggest that there are seemingly no benefits just because you aren't receiving the benefits is naive. No one's doing all this for free.
    >If the only way to improve AI is using more and more compute like this, what is the end-game?
    You could have and probably could still say the same about the internet in general. We've been exponentially building out storage, delivery, and compute for decades. If the only way to improve the web is more and more servers, what is the end game?
    You could say the same about just about any growth industry in history. If the only way to reduce the price of bananas is more banana farms, what is the end game?
    And the answer is the same in every case. There is not infinite demand for AI and the accompanying infra just as their is not an infinite demand for bananas. If their is not an infinite demand, there is no call for infinite supply increase.
    Demand for AI will peak, plateau, and crash, over time just as the tulips, beanie babies, pokemon cards, bitcoin, and everything else does. If you're not in to tulips or pokemon, the craze seems stupid. Because the craze seems stupid, you do not feed it. So long as there are people not feeding it (in order to buy bananas or beanie babies instead of AI subscriptions), its growth and presence will be modulated just as any other thing available for purchase.
    sfilmeyer · 1791160715 · focus · HN ↗
    >How much energy does a car factory use? What about a chip fab? A hospital? A battery manufacturer?
    tl;dr: rough napkin math and basic googling, 20 MW for a car factory, 100 MW for a chip fab, 2 MW for a hospital, and 0.2 MW for an apartment the same size as the data center. Water usage is equivalent to 14 car factories, 52 hospitals, or 18,000 people at home.
    Good questions! You made me curious. In the process of looking, I came across this[0] reddit post with a chart comparing various industrial uses. For car assembly specifically, Honda has some nice global data here[1], and their total energy consumption is about 990 MW, split roughly equally between direct and indirect consumption. That's split across something like 60 factories! If I just look at direct energy consumption, that's less than 20 MW per factory.
    This[2] has a chip fab at 100 MW. This[3] has an average hospital at 1.7 MW, with the largest use just being heating. I didn't try to look up battery manufacturers. This[4] has a typical apartment at 0.77 W/square foot, which would mean just 0.2 MW for an apartment the same size as the data center in the article.
    I think a more interesting distinction is water usage. The linked article says that the Fireball LLC datacenter used 548 megagallons of water in 2025. Assuming that aligns with the "water consumption" rather than "water withdrawal" numbers from Honda, that's over 20% as much as the entire global operations of Honda equivalent to 14 factories (adjust by about a factor of two if we should be comparing to water consumption). Alternatively, it's equivalent to 52 hospitals[5] or 18,000 people in their homes[6].
    [0]<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/aiwars/comments/1tes0rr/ai_data_centers_vs_factories_energy_and_water_use/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/aiwars/comments/1tes0rr/ai_data_cen...
    [1]<a href="https://global.honda/en/environment/initiatives/data/" rel="nofollow">https://global.honda/en/environment/initiatives/data/
    [2]<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/dotcom/client_service/operations/pdfs/bringing_fabenergyefficiency.ashx" rel="nofollow">https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/dotcom/client_serv...
    [3]<a href="https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/pba/health-care.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/pba/health-care.p...
    [4]<a href="https://electricityplans.com/how-much-electricity-does-an-apartment-use/" rel="nofollow">https://electricityplans.com/how-much-electricity-does-an-ap...
    [5]<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5058574/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5058574/ for water usage per square meter for hospitals
    [6]<a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2017/1131/ofr20171131.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2017/1131/ofr20171131.pdf for water per person per year
  4. doodlesdev · 1791158399 · focus · HN ↗
    > At 100m, it often exceeds the 90dB threshold for hearing loss.
    This is absolutely false. Those are the noise levels _inside_ the facilities. Noise attenuates by inverse-square law by distance. 90dB at 100 meters means 116dB at 5 meters distance... That's industrial alarms level of noise and would never fly in a residential area.
    s3p · 1791159278 · focus · HN ↗
    Having worked in data center HVAC for a while I can confidently say you would only expect this noise from a pump room. Not even the air handlers or evaporators on the roof will be this loud
    BearOso · 1791160131 · focus · HN ↗
    Extra zero. Noise level ~10m outside a facility is 90dB. Even traditional server facilities can hit 80-90dB inside. I've read reports from people living near data centers having almost constant 60-70dB noise levels at their houses, which, yeah, it still shouldn't fly.
    doodlesdev · 1791162123 · focus · HN ↗
    > I've read reports from people living near data centers having almost constant 60-70dB noise levels at their houses, which, yeah, it still shouldn't fly.
    So, first of all, I agree, that's still top much. But I think it's important to point out that 60dB is, _literally_, 1.000 less than what OP was claiming (90dB).
    I absolutely believe that there's leftover noise around the facilities, too, specially low-frequency humming for electrical equipment, but I have yet to see _actual_ reporting demonstrating newer AI-centered datacenters produce even near the amount of noise OP was claiming.
    > Noise level ~10m outside a facility is 90dB.
    That would mean 130dB of noise inside the facility, which sounds (pun intended) impossible to me, no matter how bad the acoustic planning is.
    edit: just understood what "Extra zero" meant. The original comment before being edited said 100m and that's what I was quoting.
    rockwotj · 1791164270 · focus · HN ↗
    as someone who has driven by Google data centers in Iowa and Facebook in Oregon, I can report you that I can’t hear anything from them from the roadside.
    BearOso · 1791166447 · focus · HN ↗
    Apparently the noise emanates from massive fans for evaporative cooling on the roof. It's not coming from inside, which is why it carries so easily.
    doodlesdev · 1791171939 · focus · HN ↗
    That makes sense, indeed. I've yet to see one of these new datacenters, but I've recently visited a hyperscaler's datacenter and most of the noise did seem to come from the outside ventilation.
    I still heard almost nothing ~20m from it, but neither I (nor the company who built it) knew what kinds of workloads ran there and I suspect it was mostly traditional workloads.
    zamalek · 1791168927 · focus · HN ↗
    > So, first of all, I agree, that's still top much. But I think it's important to point out that 60dB is, _literally_, 1.000 less than what OP was claiming (90dB).
    For someone who knows enough to point out that dB is logarithmic, you seemed to have neglected the fact that sound is inverse-square for distance? Unless these neighbors are _literally_ located 100m outside the data center?
  5. sillysaurusx · 1791160437 · focus · HN ↗
    1.2kw over what time period?
    echoangle · 1791160700 · focus · HN ↗
    Presumably on average over a year.
    1.2kw is power, not energy (which would be kWh).
    ButlerianJihad · 1791176083 · focus · HN ↗
    `w` is nothing but an ancient Unix command.
    The unit you want is spelled “kW”. There really is a difference, especially when you’re inconsistently correcting someone else.
    vengefulduck · 1791160730 · focus · HN ↗
    Watts is already a unit of energy over time. (J/s)
    SecretDreams · 1791160947 · focus · HN ↗
    Aka it's a unit of power. Hence the OP asked over what time to figure out the amount of energy used..?
    lostlogin · 1791161920 · focus · HN ↗
    Surely that is the average usage over time? 28.8kWh per day?
    Edit: The average household in the U.S. uses 10500kWh of power per year. 28.76kWh per day.
    <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricity-use-in-homes.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...
  6. oogali · 1791162363 · focus · HN ↗
    Bright lighting is typically an artifact of the commercial property insurance policy in effect (namely, "Protective Safeguards"). It's asking you to demonstrate that you've done enough to create a barrier towards theft/loss.
    It doesn't have to be really bright lighting but that's the easiest thing to satisfy the underwriter's request, and as a result, the cheapest to implement.
  7. phoghed · 1791171784 · focus · HN ↗
    > With all the negatives and seemingly no benefits, ask yourself who wants these data centers
    I would have traded a data center for the dairies I lived near as a kid
    huijzer · 1791172348 · focus · HN ↗
    Why?
    bombcar · 1791172781 · focus · HN ↗
    Datacenters don't (usually) smell of liquid cowshit, which is NOT AT ALL what you think it would smell like if you've only ever had the pleasure of cowpies.
    Marazan · 1791181432 · focus · HN ↗
    Cows smelly. Lots of cows really smelly.
  8. [deleted] · 1791177594 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  9. taneq · 1791180510 · focus · HN ↗
    The noise issue kinda needs to be treated separately to the other issues imo. As I understand it the loud part is the gas turbine generators that some datacenters run, so while it’s associated, it’s not strictly a datacenter thing.
  10. zahlman · 1791183277 · focus · HN ↗
    > The disparity is that older data centers were for storing and serving data. … New AI data centers are obviously compute-oriented instead.
    Maybe we should be calling them "compute centers" instead of "data centers".
    infp_arborist · 1791183871 · focus · HN ↗
    Good point. That's what a data center is called in German: 'Rechenzentrum', 'rechnen' = to compute, calculate

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