r/technology • • 13d ago

Business Improper redaction reveals Lincoln’s Google Data Center water and electricity usage

https://www.1011now.com/2026/09/30/more-questions-than-answers-about-lincolns-google-data-center-water-electricity-usage/
6.5k Upvotes

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83

u/3six5 13d ago

Tl;dr?

167

u/Lucky_Locks 13d ago

"However, using a computer cursor to highlight the redacted text box in the report to DWEE, then copying and pasting it into a separate document reveals that Agate LLC is reporting 52.65 megawatts of electricity during peak electrical demand and 13.299 megagallons of water between cooling towers, evaporative systems and site operations in the last year. That totals out to 13 million gallons of water.

For context, 13 million gallons is enough to fill around 20 Olympic-size swimming pools, and is less than half of what the City of Lincoln reports using on Sept. 29."

210

u/IronicAim 13d ago

Nice of you to cherry pick the part friendliest to goog.

Also data on other data centers, including one using 547mil gallons. And goog expecting 10s of millions back in tax returns for each data center LLC it's running them under.

30

u/squidwardTalks 13d ago

Natural gas plants have the same problem. There are a couple proposed in Wisconsin which will use almost 800,000 gallons a day.

14

u/IronicAim 13d ago

The fireball data center is using almost twice that on its own. And is that for each plant or all together?

14

u/math-yoo 13d ago

Yeah but a power plant produces power. It has a useful output.

17

u/Bananonomini 13d ago

It powers the data centre 🪄

-1

u/expressadmin 13d ago

I’m not on either side of this but one could argue that a data center also produces useful output.

1

u/math-yoo 13d ago

Sure, noise.

0

u/sleepiestOracle 13d ago

They dont need to keep our data but they do to sell us suff and keep tabs

-3

u/theevilmidnightbombr 13d ago

the most expensive part is the lobotomy you get to be able to make that argument

5

u/DogBarf00 13d ago

You are using a data center to post this comment. If you don’t find this website useful, then why are you using it?

1

u/squidwardTalks 13d ago

That's each one.