Yes, they use energy and water....as does every other human commercial activity.

But are these claims overblown?

And does life long farmer Clayton Tucker use something other than data centers to spam every feed I am on?

Yes. They use resources. Yes, you want America to dominate in data centers running AI and supporting other functions instead of China. Ultimately such advances will help us become more efficient and use and waste less resources in the long run.

The CCP would not be so benign in AI use if it achieves a lead.

Bondag said:

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They should be required to build their own energy source and then sell excess to the grid.

More Nukes!

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Guess who is standing in the way of doing that quickly. If you said Congress, you would be correct.

Not only are the huge electrical loads, but their load profile is extremely erratic depending on if they are learning or not. We're talking huge swings in load within less than a second.

Traditional generation that depends on mechanical forces cannot change that fast. It will rip apart the turbine shafts. Utilities are already fighting back requiring their load to be steady. This is solved by battery storage which uses inverters to respond quickly to the load changes.

Data centers aren't being put where they are because the land is pretty; it's because the infrastructure is already in place or can be expanded/obtained at a cheaper cost than the alternative.

On site, Natural gas turbines and Bloom Energy's fuel cells are the future for data centers. They only cost the data center and don't drive up electric rates for everyone else. Smaller, on site nuclear would work too but getting them permitted in many areas will be a problem.

Additionally, I suspect blue states will fall further behind in job, income and tax base growth as I recently heard Bernie Sanders and other Dems condemning data centers. Blue states are committing suicide in every way possible.

Squadron7 said:

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According to Grok a large data center can consume anywhere from 365-1825 millions of gallons of water per year.

A town of 100,000 consume around 5,000 millions per year.

A large industrial facility (paper mil or refinery) consumes around 36,000-100,000 millions per day.

It would be kinda of handy, though, if the energy requiremnt pushed us back into nukes which we should never have left.

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The older systems do consume a lot of water (evaporation cooling). The newer systems (closed loop) do not.

84AGEC said:

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Greenies are mysterious quiet over this.

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No they're not. Go on social media. It's everywhere and Americans by the millions are repeating the bs on water use.

The eco terrorists have already scored three td's in the game but it s a long game and the leaders need to fight back. B

Loudon County, Virginia has the highest concentration of data centers in the United States. Last I checked, it was pretty blue. But I can see certain blue pockets in the country trying to keep them out.

HTownAg98 said:

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Bondag said:

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They should be required to build their own energy source and then sell excess to the grid.

More Nukes!

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Guess who is standing in the way of doing that quickly. If you said Congress, you would be correct.

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Of course they are, once they figure out how they will get paid, that won't be a problem.

ntxVol said:

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HTownAg98 said:

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Bondag said:

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They should be required to build their own energy source and then sell excess to the grid.

More Nukes!

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Guess who is standing in the way of doing that quickly. If you said Congress, you would be correct.

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Of course they are, once they figure out how they will get paid, that won't be a problem.

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Yup....you can't charge a toll until you set up a barrier.

Martin Q. Blank said:

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Not only are the huge electrical loads, but their load profile is extremely erratic depending on if they are learning or not. We're talking huge swings in load within less than a second.

Traditional generation that depends on mechanical forces cannot change that fast. It will rip apart the turbine shafts. Utilities are already fighting back requiring their load to be steady. This is solved by battery storage which uses inverters to respond quickly to the load changes.

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Interesting.

Inference workloads are projected to account for two-thirds of total AI compute this year, and it's growing. Inference uses more total electricity than training - not because individual queries are expensive, but because it's democratic. Also it runs 24/7 at massive scale and can't be scheduled like training runs can.

DC's just look like warehouses and nobody cares if you build a bunch of them if they're making Amazon packages show up

I heard this statistic recently (going from 85 to 300 megawatts)and assumed it was data centers. When I googled it this is what I found.

• Massive Demand Surge: ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) has indicated that peak demand could soar from roughly 85 GW in 2023 to over 150 GW by 2030, with some early estimates suggesting it could hit 367,000+ megawatts (367 GW) by 2032, largely driven by AI data centers and cryptocurrency mining.
• Data Center Growth: Power demand from data centers alone is projected to jump from 8 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 to over 40 GW by 2028.

Tend to agree on the water for datacenters. Largely a one time issue when the load the system with water.

But between this, cyrpto miners, and population growth (likely going from 30+ to 40 million people over the next couple of decades), Texas is going to face a resource problem. Most notably water.

FERC will issue their colocation rule this summer. We'll see how that goes

Most here won't like it but data centers are near term build and something like 70% of the energy for those will be solar and batteries just due to supply chain and grid interconnection timelines.

Bondag said:

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They should be required to build their own energy source and then sell excess to the grid.

More Nukes!

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This

Squadron7 said:

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According to Grok a large data center can consume anywhere from 365-1825 millions of gallons of water per year.

A town of 100,000 consume around 5,000 millions per year.

A large industrial facility (paper mil or refinery) consumes around 36,000-100,000 millions per day.

It would be kinda of handy, though, if the energy requiremnt pushed us back into nukes which we should never have left.

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The key word there is "can". It doesn't mean they "will". As others have pointed out, it depends on their system design. My experience has been that when you tell these developers they are responsible for obtaining the water rights through a local groundwater district or river authority and they find out the financial and political costs, they cut way back on their water demands. In addition that water has to go somewhere once they use it. Some of it evaporates naturally, but most of them in rural areas aren't interested in pursuing discharge permits. Those are also political hot potatoes they want to avoid

My other observation is that if they use closed loop cooling they use far more water for construction during site work than they will for data center operations once the site is finished. Construction is disruptive in many ways. A lot of the complaints stem from that

I've quoted several pipelines to feed generator farms for these things. Every time they turn us down because there is a belief that they'll be on grid power within 5 years.

I'm in the electrical manufacturing/supply side of this industry and let me just say, it's a very good time to be in electrical sales. Data center construction is all the rage right now in commercial construction and some of the numbers and things I've seen are unbelievable. One of my reps in Memphis was working on Elon's data center project and he had a 6 million dollar upgrade on a PO that got approved in 10 minutes because it was going to speed up that particular item on construction. Biggest problem right now is getting material.

Hank the Grifter said:

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HTownAg98 said:

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The water use thing has been overblown. The energy use is a different matter. The thing is that a lot of these data centers want to have their energy use behind the meter. But it's going to take permitting reform by Congress to get it done.

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Can you expand on the water usage concern being overblown? I'm asking sincerely. Because that's the number one issue I see raised with these things. Especially in areas where water scarcity is already a concern.

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And I think concerns about water in Texas are different than they might be in a part of the country that is milder in temperature or that is not seeing rapid population growth.

HTownAg98 said:

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Loudon County, Virginia has the highest concentration of data centers in the United States. Last I checked, it was pretty blue. But I can see certain blue pockets in the country trying to keep them out.

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Champagne and caviar liberals want the $$$, and for everyone else to live in Marxist misery.

Sid Farkas said:

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HTownAg98 said:

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Loudon County, Virginia has the highest concentration of data centers in the United States. Last I checked, it was pretty blue. But I can see certain blue pockets in the country trying to keep them out.

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Champagne and caviar liberals want the $$$, and for everyone else to live in Marxist misery.

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Not sure this is party affiliated. It's more about the uber rich making more and the middle glass hitting the floor.