Texas hits pause on 1,800 data center projects to scrutinize power and water demands

[GrayDragon]

What's ironic about that logic is those 4 things combined will only draw about a third to half the power a data center will.


LBJ would rampage if he saw what comes out of Texas today.


You don't have to be on the left to be aware of the
Trump Dementia Symptoms.
Dude hasn't spoken a clear sentence since placing his last McDonalds order.

I didn't like Texas even before Trump; in fact I don't even consider Texas and Trump in the same way. Trump is odious, Texas just needs to go back to being part of Mexico since they don't appreciate the rights of common people in the U.S. and have no consideration for science either.

 

[GrayDragon]

I never said its a complete solution, but as I have built cooling systems without water, I know it works. 4m below ground cools air rapidly so long as you don't go too far down, there is a large area from 4m-10m, 6m in between cool the air fast. why not on a small island on the Great lakes, directly on stilts??? cold water in and out. too little thought, just lots of money goes into these

I wonder if they can't just power their systems on geothermal energy. If they are using water to cool, then the electricity they generate from geothermal could just power AC units, no?

 

[Hotlynx16]

Data centers are part of the mass surveillance agenda! About time Texas WOKE UP!!

 

[Loadedaxe]

I never said its a complete solution, but as I have built cooling systems without water, I know it works. 4m below ground cools air rapidly so long as you don't go too far down, there is a large area from 4m-10m, 6m in between cool the air fast. why not on a small island on the Great lakes, directly on stilts??? cold water in and out. too little thought, just lots of money goes into these

I get where your mindset is...that’s what starts conversations and new ideas. However, the issue is that, what sounds simple in theory becomes much more complicated once you apply it at the scale of a hyperscale data center.

You originally said no water is needed, but now the solution is “cold water in and out” from the Great Lakes. That is still water cooling.

Underground air systems can absolutely work in certain applications, but cooling a building or smaller facility is very different from continuously removing the enormous amount of heat produced by a data center running 24/7. The surrounding ground absorbs that heat, airflow itself requires energy, and eventually the system has to deal with the sheer volume of heat being generated.

Putting data centers on stilts over Great Lakes islands creates another set of problems... underwater infrastructure, storms, corrosion, power transmission, fiber connections, environmental permitting, aquatic life concerns, and thermal pollution from returning warmer water to the lake.

And we also have to be careful when modifying natural ecosystems on a massive scale. History is full of examples where ideas that looked practical at first created unintended environmental consequences later.

I’m all for thinking outside the box, and alternative cooling methods absolutely should be explored. I just don’t think it’s fair to say the problem exists because nobody has thought hard enough about it. The difficult part is making these ideas work reliably, economically, continuously, and at enormous scale without creating another problem somewhere else, which us humans regularly do.