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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
…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?
Why are data centers so thirsty anyway? Can’t cooling systems just reuse water in a closed loop?
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.
Then why the fuck do they keep wanting build them in the middle of the desert then?
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.
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?
In the states? 1-2 years tops.
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.
Externalization of cost, the environment and community bears the cost instead of the corporation. Privatize the profits, externalize the costs.
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.
Maybe in AZ or other states but CA deserts are not tectonically stable.
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?
Probably some ecological or geologic zone that would be precise but I don’t know.
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.
Because the local and state governments in those deserts keep promising them unlimited water for nearly free
Then local governments need be strung up. Tar and feathered and hung from the largest tree in the state.
Demand, ain’t much of it in the desert. Also, easy to manipulate governments.
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
deleted by creator
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.
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.
No, usually the water doesn’t cool down fast enough. Trying to reuse it just slowly heats it up, until either the water or the servers evaporate.
their servers evaporating sounds like a good deal to me
…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?
Evaporate chilling