They absolutely can run closed loop. It does not cool as well as evaporative cooling (it takes MASSIVE heat to evaporate water) but it can work if designed right with large system capacity and big radiators. Trouble is it’s likely more expensive than pissing away the water and we know all that matters is bottom line.
Comment on Tucson City Council votes 7-0, unanimously to kill AI Data Center
Fuck_u_spez_@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Why are data centers so thirsty anyway? Can’t cooling systems just reuse water in a closed loop?
innermachine@lemmy.world 1 day ago
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 1 day ago
No, usually the water doesn’t cool down fast enough. Trying to reuse it just slowly heats it up, until either the water or the servers evaporate.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
their servers evaporating sounds like a good deal to me
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 22 hours ago
usually the water doesn’t cool down fast enough
…in the time chosen. If the planet can get down to 13c overnight, I bet Skippy’s relatively smaller data centre can get down sooner with a proper loop.
I know it’s hard finding a good spot of flat land now that the choicest spots have all been fracked for methane and are no longer stable - thanks, ‘green’ energy shysters! - but what else were ya gonna do with all that space under the solar panels?
By-product? Free showers for the homeless with that waste heat. Yay?
LodeMike@lemmy.today 20 hours ago
Evaporate chilling
Natanael@infosec.pub 1 day ago
Evaporative cooling needs less water volume and less surface area for the same cooling effect. They could simply use bigger heat sinks outside the building and have a bigger water cooling system to make it closed loop, but they don’t want to do that.
Fredselfish@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Then why the fuck do they keep wanting build them in the middle of the desert then?
StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Cheap land, dry air is good for evaporative cooling, and many arid areas have a surprising amount of ground water. It ultimately comes down to being the cheapest option, not the smartest or best option.
Vandals_handle@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Externalization of cost, the environment and community bears the cost instead of the corporation. Privatize the profits, externalize the costs.
Fredselfish@lemmy.world 1 day ago
So how long to the billionaires have that entire city council replaced with people who are in their pocket and will vote for its passing?
roofuskit@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Demand, ain’t much of it in the desert. Also, easy to manipulate governments.
Taldan@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Because the local and state governments in those deserts keep promising them unlimited water for nearly free
Fredselfish@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Then local governments need be strung up. Tar and feathered and hung from the largest tree in the state.
Fidgetting@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Two more reasons not yet mentioned:
It is close to a population center (Phoenix) keeping latency low to customers. Getting customers off the public Internet quickly and into your private network fast is best for a lot of reasons.
Cheap and abundant solar power. Data centers are extremely power hungry and power lines are expensive so companies like Amazon almost always secure abundant power rights before building. Google built their first data center in The Dalles Oregon because an aluminum smelter had gone belly up and left a bunch of capacity unclaimed in a local hydroelectric dam.
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In addition to the other answers;
America’s deserts are tectonically stable and don’t experience natural disasters. If you want your data and/or compute running in two regions for redundancy, somewhere in the desert is a good choice for one of your DCs.
Vandals_handle@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Maybe in AZ or other states but CA deserts are not tectonically stable.
toppy@lemy.lol 14 hours ago
I think evaporative cooling is more effective.
3abas@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Right, that’s what they said. For a closed loop, because it’s less “effective”, you need a much larger system. It’s more expensive to build and requires a much larger footprint and corporations like Amazon would rather save a penny than do anything to reduce their harm.