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Which makes Arizona an interesting place to place any new builds of any sort of data center. They’ve been talking about the scarcity of resources there for year

by topato 6d ago

Which makes Arizona an interesting place to place any new builds of any sort of data center. They’ve been talking about the scarcity of resources there for years, and it’s currently in an escalating tailspin of abundance. Power is cheap as hell there, but once the water dries up… things might change quickly.

whall6 6d ago
New Gen data centers are closed loop and don’t use water at nearly the same rate as previous generations
- hn993302 6d ago
  Got an example? I'm pretty sure new datacenters are still using cooling towers.
  - SteveNuts 6d ago
    QTS is building a second campus in Chicago with closed loop https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop-cooling-to-eliminate-ongoing-water-use/ https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop...
    - hn993302 6d ago
      Ok, those are truly closed loop. As in, they use ambient cooling or active chillers. I've seen too many cooling tower sites described as closed-loop because the internal system is.
- nomel 6d ago
  There's also a power generation water cost though! Something like 500g/MWh for gas/coal/nuclear (~70% of power in AZ), so a huge xAI datacenter (Colossus 2, ~1 GW/h) would use ~700 MW of this type, or ~350k gallons of water an hour, which would be 0.2% of the Colorado rivers flow rate last year. I don't know if that's significant.
  - derektank 6d ago
    Pulling recent data from the EIA, of the roughly 10,000 megawatts of new power capacity installed in Arizona between 2023 and 2025, 50% is batteries, 40% solar, 6.5% wind, and 3.5% gas. Now, most solar and wind plants rarely if ever hit their nameplate capacity, but it’s pretty clear the large majority of new power generation isn’t consuming water. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860/
    - nomel 6d ago
      Does that change the math above if they're tied into the grid? If they're tied directly to the renewables (Meta is doing this in some places), then true, not a technical increase. But you could still maybe claim they're instead preventing the equivalent reduction on average/grid (and, say, decommission of some of that coal). I suppose that's a separate point.
      - derektank 6d ago
        If it’s truly separated (no interconnect agreement) or generation capacity is below 1 MW, it won’t show up in EIA data, yes. Rooftop solar is also not included in the data for that reason.
  - AnthonyMouse 6d ago
    It's the type of situation where that amount of water use isn't going to move the needle very much even in the desert, but building thermal power plants there there is still kind of silly because a) deserts are generally well-suited to solar, and b) you could also build thermal power plants in places like the midwest where that amount of water use is totally irrelevant.
deleted 6d ago
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by topato 6d ago

whall6 6d ago

New Gen data centers are closed loop and don’t use water at nearly the same rate as previous generations

hn993302 6d ago
Got an example? I'm pretty sure new datacenters are still using cooling towers.
- SteveNuts 6d ago
  QTS is building a second campus in Chicago with closed loop https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop-cooling-to-eliminate-ongoing-water-use/ https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop...
  - hn993302 6d ago
    Ok, those are truly closed loop. As in, they use ambient cooling or active chillers. I've seen too many cooling tower sites described as closed-loop because the internal system is.
nomel 6d ago
There's also a power generation water cost though! Something like 500g/MWh for gas/coal/nuclear (~70% of power in AZ), so a huge xAI datacenter (Colossus 2, ~1 GW/h) would use ~700 MW of this type, or ~350k gallons of water an hour, which would be 0.2% of the Colorado rivers flow rate last year. I don't know if that's significant.
- derektank 6d ago
  Pulling recent data from the EIA, of the roughly 10,000 megawatts of new power capacity installed in Arizona between 2023 and 2025, 50% is batteries, 40% solar, 6.5% wind, and 3.5% gas. Now, most solar and wind plants rarely if ever hit their nameplate capacity, but it’s pretty clear the large majority of new power generation isn’t consuming water. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860/
  - nomel 6d ago
    Does that change the math above if they're tied into the grid? If they're tied directly to the renewables (Meta is doing this in some places), then true, not a technical increase. But you could still maybe claim they're instead preventing the equivalent reduction on average/grid (and, say, decommission of some of that coal). I suppose that's a separate point.
    - derektank 6d ago
      If it’s truly separated (no interconnect agreement) or generation capacity is below 1 MW, it won’t show up in EIA data, yes. Rooftop solar is also not included in the data for that reason.
- AnthonyMouse 6d ago
  It's the type of situation where that amount of water use isn't going to move the needle very much even in the desert, but building thermal power plants there there is still kind of silly because a) deserts are generally well-suited to solar, and b) you could also build thermal power plants in places like the midwest where that amount of water use is totally irrelevant.

deleted 6d ago

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