The proposal for large monetary deposits is interesting.

BBC News

Data centres could pay hundreds of millions in deposits f...

The regulator said a fee of between £237,500 to £712,500 per megawatt should be charged for upcoming projects.

This thread is to give an airing to the increasing tension between data centres and the wider public, society and infrastructure.

I do not understand why data centres are said to need to consume large quantities of drinking water. I believe it is just for cooling. But no power station uses drinking water for that. Why can data centres not use a closed loop of coolant and reject heat via heat exchangers into a river or the sea, like a power plant? If it is just cost then surely these tech bro squillionaires should be made to foot the bill, rather than devouring the precious drinking water of the citizens.

Or am I missing something?

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

I do not understand why data centres are said to need to consume large quantities of drinking water. I believe it is just for cooling. But no power station uses drinking water for that. Why can data centres not use a closed loop of coolant and reject heat via heat exchangers into a river or the sea, like a power plant? If it is just cost then surely these tech bro squillionaires should be made to foot the bill, rather than devouring the precious drinking water of the citizens.

Or am I missing something?

Partly, it's that so many tech companies are choosing desert locations for their data centers, where any water use will take from water used by people. There are no rivers or seas, just underground aquifers which are already under siege from municipalities and agriculture. Here's a good article on the reasons for this flocking to the desert, which seems counterintuitive at first.

MIT Technology Review

The data center boom in the desert

The AI race is transforming northwestern Nevada into one of the world's largest data-center markets—and sparking fears of water strains in the nation’s driest state.

39 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Partly, it's that so many tech companies are choosing desert locations for their data centers, where any water use will take from water used by people. There are no rivers or seas, just underground aquifers which are already under siege from municipalities and agriculture. Here's a good article on the reasons for this flocking to the desert, which seems counterintuitive at first.

MIT Technology Review

The data center boom in the desert

The AI race is transforming northwestern Nevada into one of the world's largest data-center markets—and sparking fears of water strains in the nation’s driest state.

I must confess I got bored with this tedious article before it got to any explanation of why deserts are preferred. And I don’t really buy it, because there are plans for over a dozen of these bloody things in Scotland! I read an article about them in the FT.

But at least the part I read did - eventually - get round to confirming the water is indeed for cooling and the net consumption is due to the use of evaporative cooling towers. Which raises the obvious question of why allow them to use this wasteful method instead of some kind of non-evaporative heat exchange. And if nothing else works in the desert, then refuse them permission to build there!

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by exchemist