. According to analysis by the Guardian, two-thirds of planned datacentres in the US are in drought-stricken areas. The larger centres need up to 5m gallons of water a day for cooling, equivalent to the average usage of 50,000 people. It is unclear what the plan is and whose needs will take priority between AI, agriculture and everyone else.
“People are reporting bill spikes,” [Erin]Brockovich says, reading an email from someone who says their monthly water bill went from $22 (£17) to more than $350 (£265). The threat of these centres is about more than money – it feels existential. “How will the water use disrupt the balance of nature? People are asking: “What will happen to us?”
Evaporative cooling happens but isn’t the desired or main effect. Water rains down in the cooling towers to exchange heat with the air. Some water evaporates, but most heat is lost by conduction to air.
Now, if you’re a dumb and cheap techbro, instead of paying engineers to properly size your cooling towers, you just buy whatever cheap HVAC CTs you can find, which will be quite undersized, and you’ll run the fan at full blast, maximizing evaporative cooling to compensate for the lack of surface area for conductive cooling.