Utah Data Center

I’m remembered of Gladiator…I think…?

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

😎

Many of them are using large natural gas engines as prime power and/or planning to use them as prime power 100% of the time. 
I can also tell you because of the transient load caused by “AI learning” the grid can’t even support the power needs..what I am trying to tell you, even when grid power is available they can’t use it..

I know this because I have been personally working on several projects to provide prime power…package, commission, operate and maintain ..I won’t be calling these companies out by name for obvious reasons. 

I can tell you- a recent project for Dell wrapped up that included 300 x CAT 3616s 

I am not trying to be rude, but most folks have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to powering data centers..

What percentage of datacenters run on their own generators as a primary source? 

I have no idea- as this whole data center need for power is expanding at such an incredible rate and the type of power needed is a continuously evolving...(weekly)..

I do know they are not afraid to throw billions of dollars at acquiring their own power..

Natural gas certainly makes more sense than the diesel generators, I suppose. Since the Dell project just wrapped up, where is it located?  That might make for an interesting read. 

Droopy is always gonna droopy.

Taken this morning at the Antelope Island Endurance race. That’s what’s left of the Salt Lake between the island and SLC.  You could walk it. The water the new mega data centers are going to use is a real problem. Before we even get to the fact that they want to double the states electrical usage with just one data center.

And get years of tax breaks to do it. But according to TG we should just say yes sir may I have another. 

Can someone explain the water issue? Is it not recirculated through the cooling system like on a car or dirt bike? Or it is but there is such a massive amount of water to fill the system…. How is the water wasted?

How hot does it get? Can you create enough heat to generate power from the water? Or distribute it out to the community for radiant heat? I assume these problems/ideas would have been thought of already… guess I should do some reading.

I have these same questions and am hearing conflicting answers.

It's a tough one. It is true they are closed loop systems, but it's water-to-water cooling, plus they do flush the systems so it does consume water that way as well and there's proper disposal of the blow down to be considered. But, when you hear that attempts to learn actual consumption by concerned residents in Oregon being blocked by lawsuits, and things like centers being discovered to have 40 unlicenced wells on their property or drawing an entire towns worth of water through a meter not registered to them you start to wonder.

Also consider, the cooling requirements for the hyperscaler is one thing. The cooling requirements for a gas turbine power plant supplying one is apparently 10-13 times higher than the hyperscaler itself.

Much of this COULD be mitigated if you get out in front of it in the design phase, but we're talking about some of the worst corporate actors around. They're not making any accomodations unless forced to.

I need to do some reading too but you bring up interesting questions. 

Our local nuclear generates a big steam cloud as water cools the reactor.

You bring up recirculation and creating power from the heated water which is basically geothermal power.

Good questions 

Problem is, most of Utah is already in a drought as it is & the climate will be affected by the data centers heat which in turn will affect annual snow fall which we rely on for water. 

Has anyone here in their workplace ever gone into an IT closet and felt the temperature difference? I've also worked in telecomm and the small rooms where the equipment is stored at the base of the tower gets so damn hot even with mulitple mini split A/C systems.  

Anyway, the cooling towers for the large data centers are more than likely 15,000+ gallons each, and I assume they will have to run mulitple units to keep up with the cooling demand. Roughly 1.8 gallons of water are evaporated per ton-hour of cooling (about 1% of recirculating water flow per 10°F temperature drop). So a 15,000 gallon cooling tower would roughly consume (evaporate) 62.5 gallons per hour or 1,500 gallons per day & 547,500 gallons a year, each unit. 

So where another problem lies here in Utah is the farms, cattle ranchers, alfalfa farmers, agriculture etc is also affected due to the consumption of water of the proposed data centers. This is just the stuff we can see that would affect us, there are lots of unknowns. 

I'm not 100% sure where I stand in the fight against data centers (obvioulsy we need SOME, but there needs to be a limit per state, per county etc). There needs to be regulation on them being built and having a vote. I think forcing it on any town as they've been doing against the will of it's citizens in Utah is about as un-American as you can get. We pay taxes and we should be able to vote on the proposals. 

In a perfect world, we should wait until we can get the levels of the Flaming Gorge up which is drained to help fill and not lose Lake Powell, fill up Lake Mead & Colorado River to higher levels, not to forget about the Great Salt Lake which has been rapidly declining as well. The West is struggling to get out of the drought & it'd be foolish to continue at the pace we are going and not think about the future and our children. They continue to build more homes in St George that boast having million gallon wave / surf pools & homes in Las Vegas, to put it simply our needs are outpacing the supply. 

Most data centers being built are using closed loop water systems that utilize air cooled chillers. The systems are filled with water, the water is treated with chemicals for corrosion prevention, and that is it. There is no flushing, blowdown, etc. There is no evaporation. Google map the area around Ashburn VA and for most of those locations, youll see 30 chillers on the roof of these co-location data centers. There are no cooling towers.

This is a recent shift in construction of these as cooling towers were the basis of design standard. But increase in efficiency of air cooled chillers and the ability for them to be equipped with “free cooling” modules has changed the game. Also, the IT equipment and how the cooling water is distributed to them doesnt really favor a open loop tower system as much as it used to. 

Water supplied to data center equipment is 40-60 degrees F, returning temperatures are 60-80. There is limited potential for enegy recovery. You see heat recover at power plants because theyre dealing with high pressure steam (youre seeing plumes because the towers are condensing steam back in to water - a lot of energy given up there). 
 

Data centers in the northeast are powered by grid power. Most data centers or groups of data centers get their own medium voltage substations from the utility co. Generators are diesel for backup. The natural gas sources are utility power which, in a catostrophoc failure or other event, could be turned off. Data center owners cannot have the facility go down, hence diesel backup.

FWIW, Google was building data centers 15 years ago worldwide that relied on cooling towers as the primary source with chillers used only as backup. They also built them in locations in the US and Europe that favored year round “free” cooling temps (ie mild) so the cooling towers ran 24/7/365. And as the poster above said, cooling tower evaporation is a real thing, many towers have 1.5 or 2” cold water makeup water connections (individual cells…multiply that by 30 or 40 for these data centers). The milder and drier the climate, the more water will be absorbed by the ambient air. But you never heard anything about that.

Source: I am a 20 year industrial / commercial HVAC design engineer.

Disclaimer: I am neither for or against data centers.

I appreciate the insight above from folks with knowledge of the infrastructure used to power and cool these things.

A good question to ask ourselves - How does the general population benefit from these supercomputers long term?

Why are these being pushed so heavily and quickly?

These aren't the passive datacenters of yesteryear.

I think I've mentioned this comparison here before, so my apologies if I have... Look back at the railroad expansion in this country.

Government heavily subsidized and gave two RR companies a bunch of land to build tracks, and land next to the tracks as well. The RR companies then sold the land surrounding the tracks to people for crazy profits.

The railroad connected us in a new way - people and goods could travel much farther, much more efficiently. This empowered people and small businesses, and definitely helped create some massive ones, too. Towns and cities popped up all over along the tracks.

There were real tangible benefits. But, the RR companies owned and controlled this movement of people and physical goods. Also, RR companies weren't giving you access to a tool temporarily so they could learn how you operate and think, it was mutually beneficial.

Sure, there is a temporary influx of work in the area as they are constructing these things, but then what? Shouldn't we focus on sustainable development of industries and technologies that actually benefit the communities they are in long term?

Are you concerned that you don't see any attempt to tell and sell this type of story?

Have you seen any evidence of big tech sharing the spoils? The spoils that were largely built on all of us willingly giving over our data, because we got free or cheap social media sites or tools to use.

Have you seen any data from private sector that show any meaningful return on AI deployment and investment?

Since social media and Facebook, suicide is now the second leading cause of death for young people in this country. Coincidence?

People saw real tangible benefits and improvements in their lives from the railroad development, and quality of life as a result. 

Can the same be said here with AI and these supercomputers? If not, what do we think the point of this is?

What are the odds the general public, and our tax contributions, end up footing the bill at some point with this whole deal? Because right now it seems too big to fail. And when things are too big to fail, the taxpayer makes sure it doesn't.

EDIT - I have seen private sector data showing benefits. Insurance companies finding reasons to provide less support to customers, hospitals overcharging for services as AI tools elevate billing codes to charge more for same or less service. This happened to me with an ER visit this year, and I still have an open case with them as I challenged the billing codes. Most folks wouldn't dig into the weeds like this and they know it.

On the flip side, I read about a dude who is using AI to reverse engineer things like Microsoft Office, Adobe, etc. and is uploading an open source version. Combating the subscription based world that we are all being increasingly subjected to.

AI doesn't change the logic of capitalism, it mostly accelerates it. 

The answer is, no thanks. But nobody’s asking us. So thank you sir, may I have another.

Yep, and this should make us pay attention more. Not just about cooling and powering these supercomputers...

We opened the floodgates once everyone had a smartphone in their pocket. And this happened incredibly quickly in the grand scheme of history - within a decade or two.

We all became way more connected, and addicted, to using them. All the apps developed for use on them are designed to keep us engaged (addicted), and they learn behavioral patterns, movement patterns, they house all of our personal contacts, pictures, messages, emails, banking information, etc. They have cameras and microphones, which we use, but they can also be used on/against us (Flock cameras as another example). Third parties can get into your phone and watch or listen whenever they want with a little digging. AI will only empower "hackers" ( and governments, three letter agencies, etc.) even more.

So we have a couple decades of a tremendous amount of data on human psychology and patterns of being (on basically everyone). This data lives in passive datacenters. And now we are building supercomputers that will enable all of this data to be better utilized on a mass scale, and at hyperspeed.

Yes, the data we've all contributed in conjunction with incredible compute power could (and will) be used for a lot of good - scientific and medical advancements, etc. But, look at the major players, and who they are linking up with currently. 

Power, conformity, and social media have eroded critical thinking. And made people a lot more miserable. See increase in suicide, school/mass shootings, etc. as it stokes the fire of the connected and sensationalized world we all live.

Don't surrender your critical thinking to a tribe. Especially an artificially manufactured one. This is the biggest disease and threat of the modern world in my opinion.

For thousands of years we've been in the "cognitive revolution" of humankind. I think this is now transitioning (quickly) into cognitive warfare, or the push to control the human mind - at the individual and societal level. We outsource cognitive processing more and more, and we're doing so at an alarming rate.

I think many people on this planet are catching up, hence the resistance and demand for slowing down and putting guardrails in place on these technologies in general (not just datacenters/supercomputers). There are a lot of examples where this is working.

The optimist in me thinks this is sparking a conscious revolution, where hopefully this steers the collective ship in a better direction for everyone, and the planet we all call home. The planet we've inflicted an astonishing amount of damage on over the past couple hundred years in particular, due to whatever quest this is that we're on...

I think the next decade is gonna be pretty wild, as if the last decade wasn't wild enough.

We don't need to continue playing along with this shitty game. We forget how much power we have as individuals, and even moreso when we work together towards common goals.

Either way don't forget to enjoy the ride eh! Thank God for dirt bikes.