Tucson City Council votes 7-0, unanimously to kill controversial Data Center
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Because closed loops are more expensive in the short term, making it a non-starter
I guess water is cheep enough.
Still kinda obnoxious though. Like they couldn't see that the ultra high water usage was the thing that would get the most pushback from?
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What’s it called/who should I look up to learn about this?
Its an amazon data center in Gilroy, been in the works for a long time but they recently put up the development signs so I think now that they ran the new water lines a like a year ago they are ready to break ground
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I have somehow avoided Amazon all these years. It’s easy for me, nothing I require is connected to Amazon.
I’m sure there are aspects of the business that I can’t avoid that I don’t even know I’m being dragged into, but I don’t spend my money with them.
Anytime I can’t find something somewhere else, I just move on and forget about it.
The only times I’ve ever been bummed about it is when I’m working on some small project and the parts are half the price on Amazon. Most recently, it was parts for an arcade machine.
If I’m being inconvenienced, I don’t even know it.
I walked away originally when they acquired cdnow.com. I last visited the site when it began redirecting to Amazon.
I've boycotted Amazon completely for 25 years, ever since their 1 click patent bullshit. It's not that hard to do, but people are lazy and cheap.
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Said in another comment, our deserts are tectonically stable and free of natural disasters. If you want redundant DCs, picking one on the desert is a good bet.
Yeah, all we got is man made tragedy of the commons disasters where the data centers deplete not only the water for humans, but the water for the data centers. Poof, no more data.
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I don't understand why they even need to use up water. Water cooling does not require you to evaporate the water. You can just keep it as a closed system and reuse the water.
If nuclear power plants can manage it which would be easy for a server farm
Closed loop watercooling is really just air cooling with extra steps. The water is heated by the devices and cooled by a large radiator with fans. Or it's cooled with a chiller which in turn is cooled by a radiator with fans.
Replacing the water is the most effective (yet wasteful) way to remove the heat.
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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.
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?
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Why are data centers so thirsty anyway? Can't cooling systems just reuse water in a closed loop?
Evaporate chilling
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Yeah, all we got is man made tragedy of the commons disasters where the data centers deplete not only the water for humans, but the water for the data centers. Poof, no more data.
I'm more worried about humans draining our aquifers that took thousands, even millions, of years to fill. That water is no more replaceable than oil.
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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.
Externalization of cost, the environment and community bears the cost instead of the corporation. Privatize the profits, externalize the costs.
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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.
Maybe in AZ or other states but CA deserts are not tectonically stable.
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Closed loop watercooling is really just air cooling with extra steps. The water is heated by the devices and cooled by a large radiator with fans. Or it's cooled with a chiller which in turn is cooled by a radiator with fans.
Replacing the water is the most effective (yet wasteful) way to remove the heat.
To a point, yes. While you’re still using air to cool the water, I think it’s still a little more efficient than blindly keeping the server room at a low-ish temperature.
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Its an amazon data center in Gilroy, been in the works for a long time but they recently put up the development signs so I think now that they ran the new water lines a like a year ago they are ready to break ground
They don’t even have enough water for the garlic anymore, and that’s the crop equivalent of a fucking lizard
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Then why the fuck do they keep wanting build them in the middle of the desert then?
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.
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Then why the fuck do they keep wanting build them in the middle of the desert then?
Because the local and state governments in those deserts keep promising them unlimited water for nearly free
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It's not their water, so they don't care.
When it finally runs out, they'll just go somewhere else.That is so thoughtless and shortsighted of them! If we run out of water, how will the poor Saudis grow alfalfa for their racehorses?
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Good. This whole thing was stupid when the local government and utilities keep telling us little people to conserve water because, well we're in a 113 degree desert with a complete lack of water due to climate change and they wanted to do this bullshit.
Have you tried collecting the condensation off the glass? If you use that to wash your armpits you can go an extra day before you shower so Jeff Bezos can make numbers go up in his theoretical money.
Edit:
"Comical" thought. There is less than $2.5 trillion in cash circulating.That wouldn't cover 20 people net worth in a country of near 350,000,000.
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To a point, yes. While you’re still using air to cool the water, I think it’s still a little more efficient than blindly keeping the server room at a low-ish temperature.
Keeping the server room cool is just using an air conditioner which is cooled by a radiator with a fan, and then using that cooled air to cool another radiator with a fan. Every step is a loss of efficiency.
The main advantage of water loops is that you get to use a different form factor for the radiator and fan by moving it away from the source of heat and aren't limited by the case dimensions.
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Evaporative cooling needs less water mass 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.
I think evaporative cooling is more effective.
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Because the local and state governments in those deserts keep promising them unlimited water for nearly free
Then local governments need be strung up. Tar and feathered and hung from the largest tree in the state.
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Then why the fuck do they keep wanting build them in the middle of the desert then?
Demand, ain't much of it in the desert. Also, easy to manipulate governments.