I did some napkin math on data center water usage for a 500MW data center in the Columbia River valley.
It uses as much water per year as 200 acres of alfalfa in California’s Central Valley. There are around 1M acres of alfalfa growing in California.
2.5MW of data center capacity is roughly equal to 1 acre of irrigated alfalfa in water usage. If you’re pulling fossil aquifer water, open loop evaporative cooling may not be the best idea, but there are plenty of places east of 100 degrees west in the US that have virtually ‘unlimited’ water where cooling towers are a great idea since they almost double the COP of a chilled water system.
It uses as much water per year as 200 acres of alfalfa in California’s Central Valley. There are around 1M acres of alfalfa growing in California.
2.5MW of data center capacity is roughly equal to 1 acre of irrigated alfalfa in water usage. If you’re pulling fossil aquifer water, open loop evaporative cooling may not be the best idea, but there are plenty of places east of 100 degrees west in the US that have virtually ‘unlimited’ water where cooling towers are a great idea since they almost double the COP of a chilled water system.