The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water Our digital lives are sucking up Virginia's water
grist.org
The state is home to the data center capital of the world. Can it handle AI's thirst?
  • Hackworth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    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.mlOPMEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

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

        • eleitl@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          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.