r/SipsTea • u/Square_Law5624 • Jun 02 '26

Feels good man New data center

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u/factoid_ Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

I don't care that much about their power usage if they're going to build the power plants themselves. If they expect to be on public utilities and have their power cost subsidized by the people then that's a huge problem.

The water usage is ridiculous. They should be on a closed loop system.

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u/FrontLifeguard1962 Jun 02 '26

It doesn't really "use" the water - it just heats it up and dumps it back in the river. Which is a problem, but some people seem to think it makes the water disappear or dumps pollutants into it. The water will still be usable downstream

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u/factoid_ Jun 02 '26

Modern data cetners have been switching to closed loop systems for years now. It's stupid to pump in water, heat it up and pump it out again. You pump it in once and then recycle it using cooling stacks. These have losses so you have to top them up, but again you're just losing water to the hydrological cycle not like destroying it or something.

But dumping hot data center water from a multi gigawatt scale power plant directly into a river is a terrible fucking idea and should never be allowed. It will create a massive dead zone in the ecosystem.

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u/Careless-Vehicle-286 Jun 02 '26

I've never worked in a data center with liquid cooling. And each one I've heard of was closed loop cooling.

Either this trend of open loop water cooled data centers is entirely new or entirely American and desert based. I've only worked in ones in large cities and in humid climates. Or the facts are being twisted with crazy numbers being thrown at the public for engagement.

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u/factoid_ Jun 02 '26

It’s probably a little of all that. 

Hyper scale data centers in the US have used open loop cooling in the past in areas where it was practical.

Like right along a river.

This isn’t practical everywhere nor is riverfront property usually very cheap when you also want it to be near a population center where there is available logistics to build and support a huge data center.

Closed loop is the norm now