A.I. tools fueled a 34% spike in Microsoft’s water consumption

https://fortune.com/2023/09/09/ai-chatgpt-usage-fuels-spike-in-microsoft-water-consumption/

by alexzeitler • 3 years ago

27 9 3 years ago

Veserv• 3 years ago

That is still only 1.7B gallons of water total. ~7M cubic meters or ~5200 acre-foot.

Bulk desalinated water is ~0.50 $/m^3, so that is only $3.5M of water. I guess you could charge them $3.5M for their water usage?

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/ir...

To compare with farming, farming averages ~1.5 acre-foot per acre of irrigated land, so that is only ~3,500 acres of farmland which is a lower-middle size farm. The US irrigates around 58M acres, so that is around 0.006% (6/100,000) of US agricultural water usage.

PrivateButts• 3 years ago

How is the water 'consumed'? I see that in the article that they say that they only draw water in on hot days, but what happens to it after? Surely they can't hold onto all of it. Is it just discharged, but a bit warmer? Wouldn't it at worst just be pumped out to a holding pond until it's cooled enough to release it back into the water supply?

1letterunixname• 3 years ago

I wager these journalists don't know what they're talking about, as usual.

Unless a data center were poorly-designed to utilize municipal potable water directly as a substitute for a co-gen chilled water plant or were using evaporative cooling on a large scale, then the water is either used for heat pump cooling (thermal gradient) or as input feed for co-gen plant chilled water supply (in-lieu of individual inefficient HVAC units) using non-potable fresh water, where possible. Chilled water is then routed to datacenter galleries where they cool air using heat exchangers.

The water isn't destroyed, it's run through the system. It's remains fresh water usable downstream for filtration into potable water, just possibly a bit warmer than it was and maybe containing very dilute, biodegradable disinfectants to prevent Legionnaires' and n. fowleri.

Example source: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/sip-or-guzzle-heres-how-goo...

Most of the water "consumed" isn't potable, it's river water. The water that is potable either comes from a municipal source or is purified on-site. Google claims they are aim to be net positive water, returning more than "consumed".

phil21• 3 years ago

Evaporative cooling is largely industry standard. Going to of course depend on local geography but it's certainly been the go-to over the past 15 years from what I can tell.

I'd be highly surprised at any other use here.

It's definitely not stored and then returned to any water system. It is consumed.

__loam• 3 years ago

It's going to be fun seeing people realize more and more how wasteful these technologies are. The energy requirements to run these systems are insane.

PeterStuer• 3 years ago

Compared to something like air travel, datacenter's energy footprints are rather benign.

bone_frequency• 3 years ago

It will be yet another case of "It is okay when big tech does it".

archo• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/1iCyM

A.I. tools fueled a 34% spike in Microsoft’s water consumption

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