I can’t wait until this legitimate concern over environmental issues meets up with the reality on the ground.
I work at a DC. We have closed-loop water cooling. We have the same amount of water as a single residential swimming pool in our pipes. It is RO, de-ionized and hyper pure, purchased and brought by a tanker truck. It was filled once, more than a year ago and no more has been “used” since. The toilets use far more water than the servers.
Other companies DO abuse the environment. We would welcome legislation requiring this practice (and others) to make it a level field. There is no need for any DC to behave badly.
Data centers can be built in a responsible way, but the big ones aren’t, instead they are built with the dirtiest and most resource consuming means possible because that is the only way to build them as fast as possible.
Responsibly built data centers of the future should be obliged not only to use closed loop systems but also actually use their huge amounts of heat instead of merely wasting it. Feeding distributed heating systems (or alternative ways of productively using that heat) should be obligatory. I know the situation is not the same as with gas power plants for example but it is incredibly wasteful not to use all that heat for something productive. We are talking about many MW here. For reference, the fairly sizeable waste incinerator plant Spittelau in Vienna has a capacity of 400 MW. There are currently data centers being built in the US with capacities higher than that and absolutely nothing productive is done with the waste heat.
Strict regulation is needed but not only that. Those gas turbines would be actually already illegal today. Laws are not enforced anymore for the oligarchs in the US. In other countries that nonsense would not fly already today.
We are known for building big ones fast. You just need to know how and execute with care an skill. Good people are expensive, and we pay well. So we charge more. And our customers know we hit all of our targets, so they are happy to pay.
The waste heat is difficult to use as it’s not that hot. We don’t have steam coming off the servers. They have to stay cool, after all. The water is significantly cooler than many domestic water heaters.
Gas turbines are a fucking nightmare. A move of despair. When our hens are running full bore during tests, we are well under 60dB. Our groundskeeping crew is significantly louder. And modern diesel is nothing like the majority of old trucks on the road today. No odor, no smoke, low-sulfur fuel, etc.
It can be done responsibly. We do it everyday. But trade secrets and NDAs keep us from speaking outside of anonymous forums like this.
That’s why I said it is not the same as in gas power stations. It is perfectly possible though, the cooling loop doesn’t have to have the temperature of domestic hot water. That is what heat pumps are for. They have built data centers doing it already in 2017.
I suspect the big ones use evaporative cooling because they’re trying to build in the gigawatt scale and IIRC there was talk about single racks reaching a megawatt soon, currently they’re ~150 kW.
The power density of those new nVIdia GPU compute servers is nuts and using evaporative cooling means less energy use than closed loop.
What I’m saying is, some of those planned datacenters wouldn’t be feasible with closed-loop water cooling. And yes, I agree with you that this should be legislated. If they can’t cool their servers without evaporating a bunch of drinking water, they can… have fewer servers.
We are rated 16MW. Small within my company. Half of that capacity consists of Blackwell racks at 135KW per rack. We use closed-loop at all our sites no matter the size. And we have some BIG ones under construction.
Yeah the problems with all these data centers are largely solvable. The power usage part wouldn’t be an issue either if they were also investing in sufficient renewable sources to power these things, but instead when they don’t just dump the burden on whatever is already there they’re always reopening ancient coal plants or setting up gas turbines.
Another power issue in some areas is that these and many other enormous energy hogging facilities get cheaper power rates than residential customers.
They should be paying at least as much per kwh as I am, and in fact, I feel like they should be getting charged way more to encourage them to reduce their power consumption and/or convert to renewables. And in the meantime, use that “way more” to lower my bill or offer real financial subsidies for residential solar installations.
Yeah, necessities should always be cheaper for individuals than for businesses. Worst case if the business can’t pay for it: it shuts down. Worst case if an individual can’t pay for a need: the individual straight up dies.
There’s a lot of things I think should be the case that are more likely to happen though
There’s still going to be an opportunity cost. You can build massive renewable sources, but powering a data center with it is a shit use compared to other things.
As with most things, the problem is never the technology itself, technologies have problems, and we find solutions for those problems, that’s what we do, that’s how the progress of technology works. But nobody these days wants to let us have the solutions to the problems or even know what they are, when they can monetize a temporary remedy they can sell to us instead. And the problem is profitable, so they want to force us to have the problem; they won’t let us stop using the problem technology either. Vulture capitalists preying on civilization and waiting for all of us to collapse from exhaustion so they can feed on our wallets, not caring that they’re watching us die.
It’s because they do t like how we organize with technology. They’re taking their toys and going home. None of us can have computers anymore, it’ll all be cloud tablets they control.
I can’t wait until this legitimate concern over environmental issues meets up with the reality on the ground.
I work at a DC. We have closed-loop water cooling. We have the same amount of water as a single residential swimming pool in our pipes. It is RO, de-ionized and hyper pure, purchased and brought by a tanker truck. It was filled once, more than a year ago and no more has been “used” since. The toilets use far more water than the servers.
Other companies DO abuse the environment. We would welcome legislation requiring this practice (and others) to make it a level field. There is no need for any DC to behave badly.
Data centers can be built in a responsible way, but the big ones aren’t, instead they are built with the dirtiest and most resource consuming means possible because that is the only way to build them as fast as possible.
Responsibly built data centers of the future should be obliged not only to use closed loop systems but also actually use their huge amounts of heat instead of merely wasting it. Feeding distributed heating systems (or alternative ways of productively using that heat) should be obligatory. I know the situation is not the same as with gas power plants for example but it is incredibly wasteful not to use all that heat for something productive. We are talking about many MW here. For reference, the fairly sizeable waste incinerator plant Spittelau in Vienna has a capacity of 400 MW. There are currently data centers being built in the US with capacities higher than that and absolutely nothing productive is done with the waste heat.
Strict regulation is needed but not only that. Those gas turbines would be actually already illegal today. Laws are not enforced anymore for the oligarchs in the US. In other countries that nonsense would not fly already today.
We are known for building big ones fast. You just need to know how and execute with care an skill. Good people are expensive, and we pay well. So we charge more. And our customers know we hit all of our targets, so they are happy to pay.
The waste heat is difficult to use as it’s not that hot. We don’t have steam coming off the servers. They have to stay cool, after all. The water is significantly cooler than many domestic water heaters.
Gas turbines are a fucking nightmare. A move of despair. When our hens are running full bore during tests, we are well under 60dB. Our groundskeeping crew is significantly louder. And modern diesel is nothing like the majority of old trucks on the road today. No odor, no smoke, low-sulfur fuel, etc.
It can be done responsibly. We do it everyday. But trade secrets and NDAs keep us from speaking outside of anonymous forums like this.
That’s why I said it is not the same as in gas power stations. It is perfectly possible though, the cooling loop doesn’t have to have the temperature of domestic hot water. That is what heat pumps are for. They have built data centers doing it already in 2017.
Excellent. Do you have a link or reference so I can bring it to management? I’d be a hero.
Odense data center in Denmark https://datacenter.munters.com/resources/case-studies/harnessing-heat-from-odense-data-center-for-reuse-in-district-heating/
Thank you
What’s the power scale of yours?
I suspect the big ones use evaporative cooling because they’re trying to build in the gigawatt scale and IIRC there was talk about single racks reaching a megawatt soon, currently they’re ~150 kW.
The power density of those new nVIdia GPU compute servers is nuts and using evaporative cooling means less energy use than closed loop.
What I’m saying is, some of those planned datacenters wouldn’t be feasible with closed-loop water cooling. And yes, I agree with you that this should be legislated. If they can’t cool their servers without evaporating a bunch of drinking water, they can… have fewer servers.
We are rated 16MW. Small within my company. Half of that capacity consists of Blackwell racks at 135KW per rack. We use closed-loop at all our sites no matter the size. And we have some BIG ones under construction.
Yeah the problems with all these data centers are largely solvable. The power usage part wouldn’t be an issue either if they were also investing in sufficient renewable sources to power these things, but instead when they don’t just dump the burden on whatever is already there they’re always reopening ancient coal plants or setting up gas turbines.
Another power issue in some areas is that these and many other enormous energy hogging facilities get cheaper power rates than residential customers.
They should be paying at least as much per kwh as I am, and in fact, I feel like they should be getting charged way more to encourage them to reduce their power consumption and/or convert to renewables. And in the meantime, use that “way more” to lower my bill or offer real financial subsidies for residential solar installations.
Yeah, necessities should always be cheaper for individuals than for businesses. Worst case if the business can’t pay for it: it shuts down. Worst case if an individual can’t pay for a need: the individual straight up dies.
There’s a lot of things I think should be the case that are more likely to happen though
There’s still going to be an opportunity cost. You can build massive renewable sources, but powering a data center with it is a shit use compared to other things.
We do invest in local electrical capacity.we always build more capacity than we use.
As with most things, the problem is never the technology itself, technologies have problems, and we find solutions for those problems, that’s what we do, that’s how the progress of technology works. But nobody these days wants to let us have the solutions to the problems or even know what they are, when they can monetize a temporary remedy they can sell to us instead. And the problem is profitable, so they want to force us to have the problem; they won’t let us stop using the problem technology either. Vulture capitalists preying on civilization and waiting for all of us to collapse from exhaustion so they can feed on our wallets, not caring that they’re watching us die.
But that would cost more money! Then line might go up a little less! Won’t anybody think of the poor investors!
We do. Less local resistance=quicker build=more money sooner.
It’s because they do t like how we organize with technology. They’re taking their toys and going home. None of us can have computers anymore, it’ll all be cloud tablets they control.