The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia’s water

https://grist.org/technology/surging-demand-data-guzzling-water-ai/

21 points · 5 comments · view on lemmy.world

5 Comments

Hackworth@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2y (4 replies)

They use evaporative cooling because it's the cheapest way to vent the heat. Make it more expensive, and other cooling methods become more attractive - or better yet, innovation is incentivized. Government reluctance to tax and regulate hurts the market and the people. Unfortunately, it's business as usual.

eleitl@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 2y (3 replies)

Notice you have to cool both in the power plant and the DC. And these DCs run up to a GW or more.

interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 2y (2 replies)

Closed loop cooling isn't that hard, just sone extra plumbing, pumps and fans.

eleitl@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 2y (1 reply)

IBM does 60 deg C watercooling which can be not a lot of thermal delta in nonarctic environments. It's a lot of km of infrastructure to vent directly if you want to dissipate a nuclear reactor's worth of power in a single site.

interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 2y

I don't see why cold side water temp isn't near room temperature.