Between a rock and a dry place
Water scarcity means cooling gets hard.
Growing water scarcity is taking it out on data center planners, especially in Southern California. But not everyone wants to cut back.
The market entry of a heavyweight data center operator is like walking a tightrope. One misstep in communications and it can be over even before the ground has been broken.
It is no wonder, then, that the hyperscalers like to rely on the expertise of their own data center planners and bring their own builders along.
Benefits of any experimental solutions don’t nearly scale on a par with the risks at hyperscale. For their part, hyperscalers tend to follow the cookie-cutter approach to everything.
Quite understandably, this tendency to play it safe with longstanding partners has been a thorn in the side of smaller service providers for years. Local SMEs are having a hard time getting orders, resisting price pressure and maintaining morale when the big shots come to town and start collecting tax breaks.
This "mass is class" syndrome of hyperscalers is a double-edged sword, though. Solutions that involve as yet untested supply chains do not fly with these heavyweights. As a result, there is no room for innovative data center concepts or site-specific fine-tuning or provisions for local challenges such as water shortages or the like.
Yet, hyperscalers are humming along.
Humming along at hyperscale
According to a recent forecast by Arizton Advisory and Intelligence, the global data center design market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast period between 2022 and 2027, cumulatively creating over USD 350 billion in new value. Nearly one in three Dollars (30%) of this volume is expected to come from hyperscale data centers, with Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Apple leading the way in this segment.
According to a forecast by Synergy Research Group, the number of hyperscale facilities is expected to reach the round figure of a thousand by 2024 (by comparison, there were just half that number in 2018, exactly 500). Around 40% of these are in the United States.
Efficient infrastructure procurement is expected to grow in importance by 2027, according to Arizton Advisory and Intelligence, with the use of advanced technologies and modularity coming to the fore.
According to the report, key trends for data centers in 2022 include renewable energy procurement, retrofitting data centers to install liquid immersion and direct-to-chip cooling, and deploying edge data centers globally in cities with populations ranging from 20,000 to 50,000.
Hung out to dry
Google, for its part, has drawn the ire of environmentalists in the past. About five years ago, it applied for a permit to pump away 6.8 million liters of water per day from a depleted aquifer so it could cool its expanding data center in Goose Creek in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The facility had already been gulping up 4 million gallons of tap water per day at that point.
Local residents and environmental groups were concerned about the company's impact on dwindling groundwater supplies and all hell broke loose as a result.
After a multi-year dispute over the plans, Google finally had to back down. The company agreed to use groundwater only under certain conditions, such as during maintenance or as a reserve during dry months, and pay cash for an alternative source of surface water.
A dry outlook for a hot summer
The California drought could cut the state’s hydropower in half this summer. Data centers would be among the hardest hit sectors.
That is a dramatic decrease and it means less snow will melt and flow into CA’s water reservoirs.
Under the EIA’s drought scenario forecast, which is part of the agency’s Short Term Energy Outlook released last month, hydropower would make up just as little as 8% of California’s total power generation, almost half of the 15% it clocks in under normal water conditions. “This shortfall would need to be made up from other sources of electric power supply,” the EIA said.
Should the drought persist, which is very likely according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s summer forecast, California would have to step up its game and import even more electricity from other markets. It would also have to rely more heavily on in-state natural gas-fired power.
Who would have thought something as mundane as a California weather forecast can bring about so much heated debate.