Thread

Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

384 points · 503 comments · sensanaty

yeag123 · 1791176084 · focus · HN ↗
As other commenters have pointed out, 13.3 million gallons = ~40.8 acre-feet and this being Nebraska, the obvious comparison is agriculture (Corn and Soybeans being the main crop).
The average Nebraska farm is 989 acers[1] as of 2022 and uses roughly ~1,200 acre-feet of water (or roughly 390 million gallons) per year[2]. So a single average Nebraska farm uses roughly 30 times the water the Lincoln data center uses per year. There are 44,479 farms/ranches covering 44 million acres, which accounts for over 90% of the state's total land area.
Until I looked this up, I didn't appreciate the scale of water usage in farming (even in a state like Nebraska that gets a large amount of rainfall compared to Central or Southern California). I hope that the current data center environmental focus continues to shed light on our industrial water and electrical usage.
[1]<a href="http://farmflavor.com/nebraska/nebraska-crops-livestock/top-nebraska-agriculture-facts/" rel="nofollow">http://farmflavor.com/nebraska/nebraska-crops-livestock/top-... [2]<a href="https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2024/2023-irrigation-and-water-management-data-now-available/" rel="nofollow">https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2024/2023-irrigation-and-water-man...
1. goda90 · 1791177396 · focus · HN ↗
  The most fair comparison of water use would include evaporated vs soaked into the ground vs run off into rivers vs contained in the final product. As far as I'm aware, data centers are 100% evaporated while farms are going to be some percentage lower than that(though still high). Evaporating extra water can be detrimental to an area if the rainfall isn't high enough, while soaking into the ground is fairly good.
  1. causesothere · 1791178353 · focus · HN ↗
    Plants evaporate a ton of water. So much so that corn fields create their own weather. A corn stalk is a high surface area, water infused, porous object. It's sending tons of water into the air.
  2. chii · 1791179764 · focus · HN ↗
    why would including evaporation make any difference to the water usage counts?
    The water used, whether evaporated or returned into soil (which includes rivers) is unusable any more. Unless the runoff is collected and reused again, which is a form of recycling, and should also not count towards usage of water.
    big_toast · 1791180974 · focus · HN ↗
    Aquifers maybe? Well water. The issues related to things like the California's central valley subsidence. Not sure data centers are at that scale though.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence
    swiftcoder · 1791190091 · focus · HN ↗
    Indeed. If you evaporate all the water before it soaks into the ground, you end up with a desert
  3. onion2k · 1791181405 · focus · HN ↗
    As far as I'm aware, data centers are 100% evaporated while farms are going to be some percentage lower than that(though still high).
    Newer data centres use closed loop electric (refrigeration) cooling instead of induced draft open loop evaporative cooling.
2. jchook · 1791184013 · focus · HN ↗
  Others have posted that this datacenter has not yet "come online" and that the water usage is low because it is not yet running at its full potential.
  1. eptcyka · 1791189360 · focus · HN ↗
    Isn't most of the water use by a data center consumed during construction for concrete?
3. zahlman · 1791185317 · focus · HN ↗
  > Until I looked this up, I didn't appreciate the scale of water usage in farming
  It's really just a matter of appreciating how much land is involved. Converting to metric, that's 370mm of water per year across the entire land surface. For comparison (per Wikipedia) that's about double the annual rainfall in Phoenix AZ, but considerably less than in San Fransisco (and way less than East Coast cities). Of course, that's in addition to the natural Nebraska rainfall, but you get the idea. It's not an absurd amount.
4. beAbU · 1791186240 · focus · HN ↗
  TIL about the acre-foot. Sometimes, you Americans are really funny with your units !
  1. Cockbrand · 1791186793 · focus · HN ↗
    +1 to both.
    Elaborating a bit:
    1 acre-foot is 325,851 gallons or 1,233,482 liters.
5. civvv · 1791187446 · focus · HN ↗
  The only relevant difference between datacenters and agriculture is that we need one to survive as a species, the other is actively being used for malicious crimes against humanity.
  1. Ohentis · 1791187801 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  2. gr__or · 1791189038 · focus · HN ↗
    We could get what we need to survive on a fourth of the farmland if we kicked the addiction to meat, arguably a more malicious crime against animals and the planet
    civvv · 1791189878 · focus · HN ↗
    > We could get what we need to survive on a fourth of the farmland if we kicked the addiction to meat
    100%
    > arguably a more malicious crime against animals and the planet
    Personally disagree, it entirely depends on your moral and ethical alignment though, of course. Generative AI will be used to divide and conquer us at a pace never seen before, it will destroy the internet/digital realm by burying it in generated content.
6. DonHopkins · 1791187803 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
7. lesostep · 1791189858 · focus · HN ↗
  The mass of plants growth is roughly the mass of water absorbed plus carbon from the atmosphere, minus water evaporated from leafs. The nutrients from the soil don't adhere to much.
  That's to say, farms basically convert water to food and CO2 to O2. I'd say this is the water well spent.
  1. IdiotSavage · 1791191304 · focus · HN ↗
    Certainly the vast majority of water is not absorbed by plants, but evaporates from the ground or drains off without being used. You can't just ignore that.
8. SupLockDef · 1791190047 · focus · HN ↗
  Because it's well known that the data centers are essential for the survival of the species.
  Now that we know that farms use a lot of water, we are clean to waste any lower amount of water.
  Thank you!
  1. xadhominemx · 1791191433 · focus · HN ↗
    Are corn ethanol and feedstock alfalfa (the two largest agricultural consumers of water) essential for the survival of the species?

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.