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Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

356 points · 458 comments · sensanaty

  1. aliasxneo · · 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. WarmWash · · focus · HN ↗
      The current hysteria has little to do with datacenters and a lot to do with societal unrest about AI.
      1. bdangubic · · focus · HN ↗
        I live in northern va and I can tell you that histeria is about ballooning electric and other bills. vast majority of population is unfortunately “not there” in regards to any unrest about AI
        1. roenxi · · focus · HN ↗
          Is there a well known reason that the US has ruled out building more power plants to meet the increasing demand? This seems like a weird complaint; if it is a problem that this industrial activity uses power, why not ban all industrial activity? Traditionally the response to more demand has been to build more supply.
          1. kube-system · · focus · HN ↗
            1. Power plants take a long time to build and large capital investments, typically both public and private dollars. The power demand for the current hyperscaler datacenter trend is happening faster than supply can keep up, guaranteeing the current spike in prices.

            2. Most heavy industrial users of power are running stable businesses that are often expected to offset some of the infrastructure costs themselves, making payments over time. Not only have many hyperscalers bent the rules to avoid doing this, even if they did do things the right way, much of the rapid investment is highly leveraged and if a bubble pops, taxpayers would be stuck with the infrastructure bill anyway.

          2. Gigachad · · focus · HN ↗
            Because the bubble will pop if they have to wait for power plants to be built.
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