That is an increase but less than I was expecting. Looking at the water use charts at TWDB it looks like irrigation uses the lions share of water at over 55%, which is most likely for farming. Municipalities (people) are next at about 25%. Surprisingly cattle and livestock barely register. I would have expected more.
Still not a fan of it, but interesting to see the comparative numbers.
Does the livestock figure include the water being used to grow their feed? Probably not because of course there’s no guarantee that their feed is Texas sourced. But there are just SO many examples of already too dry places having astronomical amounts of water given (read: stolen legally) to farm stupidly water intensive crops that are only good for feeding livestock like alfalfa.
I wonder if this is newly built/to be built data centers for AI, or ones that previously existed/ are being built for general web infrastructure. The article doesn’t say.
I wonder if this is newly built/to be built data centers for AI, or ones that previously existed/ are being built for general web infrastructure. The article doesn’t say.
The age of the DC doesn’t really matter. Its whether it was designed to be an “open loop” or “closed loop” cooling system. Closed loop DC use surprisingly little water because they capture and recycle it. A fast food restaurant would likely use more water than a closed looped DC. The big offending Datacenters for water use are the Open Loop design. These use massive amounts of water.
Close to me there are two DCs under construction. One is a large colocation DC and is closed loop. The other is a new AWS DC, and it is open loop. So as you can see, age isn’t really the determining factor.
So you’re asking yourself, why use open loop at all? Its energy bill is cheaper! Open loop uses swamp coolers (evaporative cooling) Closed looped requires more electricity for cooling using more traditional phase-change coolant (same as residential air conditioners).
That is an increase but less than I was expecting. Looking at the water use charts at TWDB it looks like irrigation uses the lions share of water at over 55%, which is most likely for farming. Municipalities (people) are next at about 25%. Surprisingly cattle and livestock barely register. I would have expected more.
Still not a fan of it, but interesting to see the comparative numbers.
Does the livestock figure include the water being used to grow their feed? Probably not because of course there’s no guarantee that their feed is Texas sourced. But there are just SO many examples of already too dry places having astronomical amounts of water given (read: stolen legally) to farm stupidly water intensive crops that are only good for feeding livestock like alfalfa.
I wonder if this is newly built/to be built data centers for AI, or ones that previously existed/ are being built for general web infrastructure. The article doesn’t say.
The age of the DC doesn’t really matter. Its whether it was designed to be an “open loop” or “closed loop” cooling system. Closed loop DC use surprisingly little water because they capture and recycle it. A fast food restaurant would likely use more water than a closed looped DC. The big offending Datacenters for water use are the Open Loop design. These use massive amounts of water.
Close to me there are two DCs under construction. One is a large colocation DC and is closed loop. The other is a new AWS DC, and it is open loop. So as you can see, age isn’t really the determining factor.
So you’re asking yourself, why use open loop at all? Its energy bill is cheaper! Open loop uses swamp coolers (evaporative cooling) Closed looped requires more electricity for cooling using more traditional phase-change coolant (same as residential air conditioners).