Comment on Why don't these AI data centers build by the ocean?
rainwall@piefed.social 2 days agoThey dont even need to hook up and construct a geothermal heat system for a community, either. There are giant sand heat batteries in norway to store excess heat that they then tap into their community heat systems.
These data centers could be responsible to build the giant sand battery and then be done with it, leaving the distribution rest to the municipality or state, but they aren't even inclined to do that.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It sounds a little complex in a desert because (AFAIK) data centers produce relatively low-level heat, and in the summer the inlet side would need to be cooled significantly.
The medium would be cheap as heck though.
Another confounding factor is the necessity of water cooling. I think data centers like evaporators because they can use dirt cheap and standard air cooling, and simply A/C the room with the evaporators, where more complex systems would need larger air heat exchangers and a well below ambient return.
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Nahh, there’s too much power density in modern servers for air cooling. They have either closed or open loop water cooling that simply dumps the heat in to more water. Or worse, just dumps the previously potable water that was used to directly cool the servers out in the open to evaporate.