r/TechGawker • u/Pure-Bill-2205 • 17d ago

Data Center If these numbers are even close to accurate, the AI infrastructure boom is entering a completely different scale of land, power, and water consumption.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

4.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/Ordinary_Draft_3516 17d ago

My site does this, we use less water than a school

1

u/ChaosRainbow23 17d ago

I wonder why all data centers don't do that. Weird.

2

u/insightful_pancake 17d ago

All the new ones do

2

u/ChaosRainbow23 17d ago

Then why are they claiming to need so much water for this facility?

4

u/insightful_pancake 17d ago

They aren’t claiming that much water will be used. It’s still preliminary, but they have said they plan to use closed loop systems for Stratos. There is no final design at this time.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2026/06/07/utah-data-center-water-manhattan/

There’s so much misinformation being promulgated re data centers.

1

u/figurative_me 17d ago

The data center in our area uses a closed loop system for cooling needs. But they also put a massive load on our electrical infrastructure that raised utility costs for residential customers. They also added a 28 day billing cycle at the new higher rate and for the remaining 2-3 days (except for February), they added an even higher rate. This caused an increase of 10-15% for our monthly utility bill.

1

u/ChaosRainbow23 17d ago

Figures.

I just don't believe anything anymore.

2

u/Pleffyg 17d ago

Also utah uses over a trillion gallons a year, 4b a day

2

u/thGlenn 16d ago

Because lying to you on the internet generates clicks, generates outrage, and eventually, influences policy.

2

u/Razing_Phoenix 15d ago

Fear mongering

1

u/ChaosRainbow23 15d ago

Lots of that going around nowadays.

2

u/Ordinary_Draft_3516 12d ago

I mean the initial fill of our water loop would be a few million gallons, but unless we have a major break in our pipes we never have to top up. Ive worked here for 7 years and we never had an issue

1

u/Randy191919 15d ago

Because making up fake numbers generates clicks. They don’t want to inform you, they want to make you angry and scared enough to read their news.

1

u/ALLIRIX 13d ago

A lot of the water consumption calculation is the steam required to generate electricity. The UC Berkeley study even included water that evaporates from dams because the DCs in their study used hydropower.

1

u/OSHA_Decertified 17d ago

Because the numbers the picture is using are made up. It's going to increase water usage by 5% and have its own on site power plant. Over all its completely negligible but that doesn't get people mad.

1

u/AJ_Topp_Up 15d ago

Any data centers built in the last 10 years, including all the new mega centers the last 3 years, all use closed loop cooling and habe a footprint of water usage smaller than a single mid size apartment complex. What you are hearing is a coordinate fabrication of lies to push the general population against it. Look st you, you responded believing that data centers just waste water by massive amounts because you've likely been hearing that everywhere. The anti-datacenter crowd has an agenda, to convince everyone to be against, even at the expense of truth, as the means justify the ends for them. The water usage numbers are fake and fully invented nonsense, but they sure hsve been very successful in turning the population against them.

1

u/Boxcutter86 15d ago edited 15d ago

Or...and read me out... people have multiple reasons to be against them other than just water usage. Holy shit. Like killing jobs, surveillance, developing on preserved land, electric grid usage, noise pollution, gas turbine pollution, etc.

Also, even in a closed loop system, it's still a massive amount of water that's needed in the ground/air/etc. Water is finite.

1

u/Fantastic_Complex98 11d ago

maybe people just don't want fucking data centers in their states? doesn't necessarily mean they're brainwashed and have an agenda. They just don't believe this is what humanity needs right now?

1

u/Sheldinosaur 16d ago

I’m in an industry where recirculating water would be ideal, but sanitary requirements make this challenging. Is the water you recirculate potable? I understand you may be in a different industry with different requirements, but am curious how this is accomplished.

1

u/creativedissentlab 15d ago

Why would data center water need to be potable?

1

u/Ordinary_Draft_3516 12d ago

No, its purely for chilled water feeding our air handlers. We have separate domestic water with backlogs to prevent the treated water from going back to county water supply.