• Natanael@infosec.pub
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      22 hours ago

      Evaporative cooling needs less water mass and less surface area for the same cooling effect. They could simply use bigger heat sinks outside the building and have a bigger water cooling system to make it closed loop, but they don’t want to do that.

        • Taldan@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          Because the local and state governments in those deserts keep promising them unlimited water for nearly free

          • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            Then local governments need be strung up. Tar and feathered and hung from the largest tree in the state.

        • Fidgetting@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          Two more reasons not yet mentioned:

          It is close to a population center (Phoenix) keeping latency low to customers. Getting customers off the public Internet quickly and into your private network fast is best for a lot of reasons.

          Cheap and abundant solar power. Data centers are extremely power hungry and power lines are expensive so companies like Amazon almost always secure abundant power rights before building. Google built their first data center in The Dalles Oregon because an aluminum smelter had gone belly up and left a bunch of capacity unclaimed in a local hydroelectric dam.

        • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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          13 hours ago

          Fewer hurricanes out there, and other natural disasters as well. I don’t know how tuscon is seismically, but otherwise it has a lot of lowere risks from nature, probably

        • StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          Cheap land, dry air is good for evaporative cooling, and many arid areas have a surprising amount of ground water. It ultimately comes down to being the cheapest option, not the smartest or best option.

          • Vandals_handle@lemmy.world
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            17 hours ago

            Externalization of cost, the environment and community bears the cost instead of the corporation. Privatize the profits, externalize the costs.

          • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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            22 hours ago

            So how long to the billionaires have that entire city council replaced with people who are in their pocket and will vote for its passing?

              • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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                19 hours ago

                Trump will have them arrested on terrorism charges in a month…after a totally coincidental delivery of a golden idol to trump, from bezos

                edit I said this as a joke, and later found Apple recently gifted Trump a golden idol.

                God I miss when satire was silliness, and not psychic future sight.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          In addition to the other answers;

          America’s deserts are tectonically stable and don’t experience natural disasters. If you want your data and/or compute running in two regions for redundancy, somewhere in the desert is a good choice for one of your DCs.

            • shalafi@lemmy.world
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              10 hours ago

              I know. Was looking for a term to separate the two areas. Not like the San Andreas fault is stable!

              How could I have dialed that in better?

        • 3abas@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          Right, that’s what they said. For a closed loop, because it’s less “effective”, you need a much larger system. It’s more expensive to build and requires a much larger footprint and corporations like Amazon would rather save a penny than do anything to reduce their harm.

    • innermachine@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      They absolutely can run closed loop. It does not cool as well as evaporative cooling (it takes MASSIVE heat to evaporate water) but it can work if designed right with large system capacity and big radiators. Trouble is it’s likely more expensive than pissing away the water and we know all that matters is bottom line.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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        20 hours ago

        usually the water doesn’t cool down fast enough

        …in the time chosen. If the planet can get down to 13c overnight, I bet Skippy’s relatively smaller data centre can get down sooner with a proper loop.

        I know it’s hard finding a good spot of flat land now that the choicest spots have all been fracked for methane and are no longer stable - thanks, ‘green’ energy shysters! - but what else were ya gonna do with all that space under the solar panels?

        By-product? Free showers for the homeless with that waste heat. Yay?