Thames Water to datacenters: Cut water use or we will
theregister.com
theregister.com
I still think that much water for a data center is crazy (why wouldn't they use some form of closed-loop cooling? Or do they and they need 1-5M liters to top it off? Just seems excessive to me but I also don't know much about how data center cooling works.
They are end of life Victorian pipes, in a massively built up and down part of the world. It was always going to cost lots, which is why the govt privatised the problem before people realised what was involved.
Renationalising it would put up taxes for everyone in the country not just Londoners, thats why London is so expensive to live in. If labour get in, and they renationalise it, labour will be exploiting the stupidity of their voters.
Hanlon's razor, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity except stealth Govt planning.
"the amount of power needed to run data centers on a global scale, which amounts to 416 terawatts, or approximately 3% of all electricity generated on Earth."
"Making massive-scale changes to data center operations to enhance the efficiency of energy usage can be a complex, costly, and time-consuming venture. But changes don’t have to be extreme to be effective, and they don’t need to happen all at once. By utilizing the following sixteen methods, data centers can quickly start to efficiently lower their power usage without significantly impacting their bottom line."
More at the link for a more detailed explanation.
Personally I think this is Thames water looking to shake down the IT sector. Good luck with that considering the brains that run the IT sector! LOL.
The number of pipes and infrastructure that need replaced to fix that likely represents decades of work and funding.
The state of their infrastructure is wretched. The fact they saved themself from forced nationalization is depressing as well.
It’s pretty nakedly obvious that they’re run poorly by design.
Thames Water just illustrates how poorly this can play out.
Thames Water is like the poster child for people who say anything government run is inherently bad because only the free market can optimize it and make it profitable. Except for the part where it’s private.
https://uptimeinstitute.com/resources/research-and-reports/s...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/451_Group#Uptime_Institute?wpr...
Billions in dividends paid out to the private equity that bought it, terrible performance, zero investment, zero competitors, and skyrocketing debts, that the taxpayer may well have to fix because the alternative is millions of voters no longer have a resource necessary for life.
On top of that, you of course have a rising population, competing for land (reservoirs and sewage works take up space, almost all the land in South East England is built or farmed, less farming means more sensitivity to the global ~~dumpster fire~~ food market), said population objecting to improvement works (even when improvement works are necessary for the aforementioned life stuff to be delivered), and climate change, which means, er, less water. Or more. Don't actually know. If you did know it was less, you could build desalination. If you know it was more, reservoirs and upgraded sewage systems. But don't know. So build neither, because you're private equity and fuck it, voters aren't your problem.
If there's a slightly amoral upside, datacenters are probably one of the best customers to rinse. Profit margins are high, politically not that popular, and being close to London matters. Maybe it could also be one of those kicks I've seen dreamt of a lot of HN, that forces developers to be a bit more efficient rather than throw racks at the problem.
Again, I’m just an idiot on a forum.