Hacker News Reader

Comment by yellow_lead | Hacker News Reader

The answer:

> Of course, all the property, tax incentives, and power you ever want won't do cloud providers much good if it's in the middle of nowhere. Latency is still a factor and cloud providers like to spread their datacenters out to serve broad geographic regions. In the case of the Phoenix, that's the American Southwest, which is home to just shy of a fifth of the US population.

I'm kind of put off by the title - which sounds as if they should not build in hot areas. It should be "Here's why cloud providers keep building datacenters in the America's hottest city"

View on HN

Exactly. The article is just saying random things. The title and body have no logical connection to each other, and it reads like it is trying to second guess itself on every point it tries to make.

American South West is Vast expanse. Depends on how you count it too. If DFW, Austin, San Antonio count as American South West for that 20% number, which is arguable, the Phoenix location does not make sense.

Phoenix datacenters are largely a SoCal play, the cost of investing in SoCal versus on the other side of the border with tax incentives a bit more business friendly environment and near zero land costs (compared to Coastal California metro).

When it comes to water management, the desert towns like Las Vegas, Phoenix do a far better job than coastal cities.

note: 80% of American population lives East of 98th parallel, that is roughly East of I-35 and majority of the remaining 20% is along pacific coast.

> If DFW, Austin, San Antonio count as American South West for that 20% number, which is arguable, the Phoenix location does not make sense.

Right. As measured from the center of the Texas triangle, Phoenix is 915 miles away. Chicago is 910, and Jacksonville, FL on the Atlantic ocean is 900.

Do not put Phoenix and Vegas in the same category for water management. Vegas has done a decent job, Phoenix, and the sprawling suburbs around it, have done a terrible job and are in for a very rude awakening.

Good to know. Phoenix is home to Intel and TSMC fabs too. I was assuming they have this figured out, guess not.

No, Phoenix absolutely has it figured out. There are suburbs which do not. GP is presumably confused.

Chandler, where Intel’s fab is located, is indeed a suburb. And newer suburbs are being cut off entirely, because even the Republicans have realized the jig is almost up. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/arizona-limits-new-hous...

Arizona is actually working on a plan to bring in seawater from the Sea of Cortez, people forget that the ocean is only ~62 miles from Arizona’s southern border. It’s actually one of the more realistic and economically viable desalination proposals out there.

The main obstacle are environmentalists. Unfortunately desalination (like Nuclear Energy) is to environmentalists like garlic is to a vampire.

Right, because desal is totally environmentally sound. And sourcing your water through a country that kinda hates you (for flooding their country with guns, refugees, high fructose corn syrup, etc) is also a great idea.

I’m curious why they use water instead of solar and AC with good insulation. Cheaper?

Sufficiently big AC systems often use water cooling because water is more effective at transferring heat than air, is cheaper than other liquids, and unlike other liquids is not a massive safety hazard if it leaks.

It is why if you want to defrost something quickly, leave it in water rather than in the open air.

Basically, yes. It's about cooling efficiency, cost-effectiveness, practicality and scalability. Water has excellent heat transfer properties, which allows for efficient cooling. As I understand it, solar will have limited capacity and depend on sunlight availability..which obviously fluctuates based on weather conditions, whereas data centers need continuous power supply. Also, cost of installing a large-scale solar power system and maintaining battery storage can be high.

Using solar without batteries to supplement baseload requirements is a great cost-cutting exercise, because it reduces grid draw when data center power requirements are highest (business hours) and electricity is most expensive. You can also add batteries later if they start to make more business sense.

Ah interesting, make sense. You're saying use solar most abundant and cost-effective, effectively optimizing energy consumption and saving money by leveraging solar during high-demand periods? Just spitting it back to confirm I got what you're saying.

More or less, yes, although I'm not sure what you mean by "solar most abundant and cost-effective"

Don’t homes in Arizona mostly use swamp coolers? They’re more efficient as long as you have a water supply

Hell my high school in Illinois had one. If you stood in the wrong spot some days you’d get spritzed because it wasn’t quite evaporating everything.

Most homes use air conditioning. Often times installed by a crane on SFH roofs. I don't think efficiency is a word most people bother with, unfortunately.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com