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A Shortage of Drinking Water and Electricity in Ireland

M three

Given the current and future shortages of drinking water in Ireland, and also electricity, how on earth was it a good idea having so many data centres here storing information from across the globe?

Some of the facts:

One of Irelands SEVENTY data centres is now using the same amount of water as 20,000 people. It is now using TWICE the amount of clean water it did 36 months ago.

AND it is now using the same amount of electricity as 151,000 HOMES!

https://www.businesspost.ie/news/metas-data-centre-used-same-electricity-as-151000-homes/

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L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119337853#Comment_119337853

Eh. No.

I'm saying that if its possible to suitable filter rainwater for carwashes it should be possible to do it for cooling water. But that there won't be any rainwater during a hot summer shortage anyway.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119338048#Comment_119338048

Ever seen a power station with a cooling tower? Like all the old turf ones that were across the country, or the one in the Simpsons etc.

That's a non closed water cooling system.

Odelay

Explained here

https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Ahead-in-the-Clouds/Why-water-usage-is-the-datacentre-industrys-dirty-little-secret?amp=1

irish context.

https://www.businesspost.ie/business/data-centres-use-same-amount-of-water-as-large-towns/

they can use as much as 500 tons of water a day.

Ramasun

I recall a heated debate in Ireland some years ago about water. Something something you can't charge for water as it falls from the sky something something it's already paid for something something.

Basically enough people kicked up a stink that a long term solution was blocked by angry protests. Hey ho.

M three

The Irish government have have been major cheerleaders for a total explosion in the number of data centres in Ireland. Even their own strategy says "data centres pose considerable challenges to the future planning and operation of Ireland’s power system. Such challenges arise in terms of renewable energy policy/objectives, generation adequacy including maintaining local and regional security of electricity supply, community acceptance and electricity customer costs.

So there you have it in black and white from the government, data centres will affect electricity customer costs and energy security for homes.

Remember this everytime you get that whopper of a bill.

https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/Publications/Publication-files/Government-Statement-Data-Centres-Enterprise-Strategy.pdf

M three

From the same government publication "it is the case that large energy users such as data centres contribute to network charges and the PSO levy"

So data centres = higher electricity costs for consumers

KildareP

The same strategy also states:

"Data centres can provide benefits to the electricity system due to their typically consistent, as opposed to ‘peaky’ demand profile which can provide system support at night. In addition, data centres are a potential provider of system services and demand response which is beneficial to Ireland’s energy system."

[...]

"For example, it is the case that large energy users such as data centres contribute to network charges and the PSO levy, and that increasing levels of renewables place downward pressure on wholesale prices thereby potentially mitigating the impact of PSO cost increases."

[...]

"Furthermore, data centres desire for ‘green’ electricity supply could stimulate supply and technology innovation in the renewable energy sector that attracts investment in Ireland and increases the pace of transition to low carbon technologies."

As to why our costs are so high:

we shut over a sixth of our peak consumption in generation capacity and did nothing to replace it
We left ourselves solely reliant on gas as the primary generator fuel source
we refused to build infrastructure such as LNG to allow diversifying source of supply
we pay renewable generators the gas equivalent cost per kWh, hence why we had zero insulation against the volatile gas prices as of late
We know we will lose another 1.5GW of generation capacity by 2025 yet have done sweet feck all to prepare alternatives.

And now we want to move transport and heating exclusively to electricity and our grid has no capability to cope. But it is far easier to blame the datacentre operators for using up so much power than actually do anything to solve the issues facing us in the near future...

Sam Russell

@KildareP

All true. ^^^^

EVs are not the solution to transport - PT (public transport) is, but we do not have any for large areas of the country, and outside of the cities, very little for the rest. EVs might work for most adults, and kids with the services of mammy's taxi. The rest - well .....

This is caused by the one-off houses built just about anywhere over the last 70 years with little or no concern for the needed services like ESB, gas, phone and BB, shops, schools, and of course - PT which is one that is hard to supply to a disperse population. Schools require bus transport to get the kids to school, but a part-time service ends up using part-time drivers and part-time buses, which has safety issues.

Also, these one-off houses are generally poorly built (mica - pyrite) and poorly designed with BER in the poorest end of the range.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/12/fujitsu_ammonia_datacenters/

The Japanese multinational announced in April that it was working with Icelandic startup Atmonia on the development of new catalysts to create a sustainable process for ammonia production,

Using ammonia as a storable fuel should beat batteries on both capital cost and storage capacity. It would mean datacenters could buy more of their power when renewables are peaking. And possibly sell some of that stored power back for grid stability.

Also others are working on using the waste heat from datacentres for district heating.

Way better than having old inefficient central Asian coal fired plant being used to power bitcoin mining.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119338388#Comment_119338388

"System services" are very much secondary benefits. You can't get away from the enormous power consumption per employee which is the primary concern.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119339213#Comment_119339213

'You can't get away from the enormous power consumption per employee which is the primary concern.'

.... per employee .... is strange metric. Just because a data centre has few employees and uses a high amount of energy does not cause it to become a primary concern.

The data centre is a piece of infrastructure that is there to provide am economic service, and its level of employment provided is irrelevant to its utility. Motorways do not provide much employment but do provide a significant service. The Metrolink (if it is ever built) will have no train drivers, but will still carry lots of passengers rapidly along its service line.

On using water for cooling, I have yet to see a cooling tower at a datacentre. What exactly do they do with the water? Why can it not be recycled in a closed system? I appreciate cooling is a major concern for data centres, which is one reason why Ireland is a choice location as we have a very temperate climate. I have never heard our location is favoured for water availability. Interested in this.

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119339213#Comment_119339213

If that's how we measure it then I better get onto Dublin Bus - driving over 1000 15 ton vehicles of the most un-aerodynamic form possible with only a single employee on board, day in day out, hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel used every year 😜

As for system services - all of the major data centres can provide their own power onsite if needed and will often store enough fuel to run independently for 72 hours, usually with a secondary supply stored offsite that can be called upon very quickly. This means they can switch off grid power relatively quickly if needed, most large scale consumer of electricity can't do that, or do it for very long. The downside is of course that the backup supply is almost always diesel which from a climate action perspective is not good.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119339720#Comment_119339720

The main service provided by data centres is to the world, not specifically to the Irish economy, like motorways do. So, their benefit to us in the long run, is employment, and that is quite limited, as compared with other operations by multi-nationals. The water consumption issue was news to me. From what I can see, that kind of evaporative cooling was originally designed for hot climates where closed-circuit air conditioning is much less efficient. It could be still the case that it's cheaper here too, but why then aren't all cooling systems in this country, that type, as opposed to purely electrically powered closed-loop systems?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119339836#Comment_119339836

Yes, but same point as above. They provide an essential service to the economy as a whole

Yes, I accept that point. System services are useful. I'm guessing they can act as DSUs in the grid which is a benefit, but it's only a secondary benefit as compared with the primary concern of long term electricity consumption and the effect that has on our CO2 output. I'm not arguing against data centres per-se. But, I think we need to look very hard at where they are located in future.

gjim

I looked up some numbers and found that data centres are estimated to use 14% of the electricity consumed in Ireland, not the 30% as claimed repeatedly here.

And there is little evidence that the growth of data centres has had much of an effect on the overall generation/consumption numbers. Overall electricity generation has been bobbing around between 28 and 31 TWh per year for the last 15 or 20 years. So there is no evidence of shortage caused by a spike in demand due to the growth of data centres in the overall numbers.

I also cannot see how data centres have wiped out "thousands of acres of green fields around Dublin" - the numbers just don't add up given how many data centres are located in green areas in Dublin - there are very few. Nearly all are located in business parks or light industrial areas - not on former agricultural land.

It's hard to take this anti-datacenter thing seriously when most of the arguments seem to be based on numbers and claims which can easily be fact-checked and shown to be false. It looks to me to be some sort of political allegiance badge rather than actual environmental concern.

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119339720#Comment_119339720

Our climate is primarily why it's chosen - it's never extremely hot or extremely cold for extended periods of time, we don't suffer from extremely dry or extremely humid outside air, we're not on a fault line, we don't suffer major storms, tornados, floods, lightning, etc. and it makes it perfect for evaporative cooling as opposed to air conditioning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler

Evaporative cooling works on the basis that if you draw warm air over water, the water will evaporate and this consumes a significant amount of the heat energy present within the air to do so. The end result is that you end up with cooler air that now has a higher humidity level than before.

You'll often see units in large shops during the summer that are blowing air that feels much colder compared to the air within the space around it but that aren't vented or piped anywhere so has no way of actually removing heat from the area it's "cooling" - that's an evaporative cooler:

https://www.huntoffice.ie/evaporative-air-cooler-48l-sy390781.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3JHl_6v6-AIVx7HtCh2FQQgrEAQYAyABEgK9fPD_BwE

Typically it's a sponge like material which is kept dipped in water so it is constantly absorbing. Air is then drawn through the wet sponge - in the case of a datacentre, outside air. As the air is drawn through, it causes water within the sponge to evaporate and the evaporation process removes heat as it does so. The sponge then absords more water from the tank it sits in and and the process continues.

That cooler, but also more humid, air is then blown through the ventiliation system of the datacentre where it is warmed back up again from the equipment present. That air gets extracted back outside into the atmosphere again containing the heat absorbed from cooling the equipment along with the water that was used to cool the air it as it was originally drawn in.

The only electricity used in the whole process is what is used to power the blowers to move the air around.

This is compared to a full air conditioning system which requires powerful heat pumps to move refrigerant around in a closed loop process. As it happens, though, cooling air using air conditioning naturally dehumidifies it as well, so you still end up using water even with a closed loop air conditioning system, albeit nowhere near as much water as with evaporative cooling.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119337225#Comment_119337225

Data centres turn water and electricity into jobs?

Not only Jobs in the construction and maintenance of data centres, but al the ancillary jobs which rely on data centres.

Gotta be honest, our beef and dairy farming is no saint. The vast majority of meat and dairy is exported overseas, a collosal amount of land is given over to growing fodder and grains for animal consumption, never mind the huge amount of land used for barley for alcohol production. Very little of whats grown here is consumed here. We import massive amounts of food.

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119339867#Comment_119339867

Evaporative cooling works well here because our air is not too hot nor is it too humid - somewhere like Texas, for example, the amount of water you need to evaporate to effectively cool the air will make the air so humid as to be unsuitable for use in a datacentre environment.

100% agree on location. There's no need for them to be all clustered around Dublin and a recent consultation by the CRU alluded to that too:

https://www.cru.ie/document_group/data-centre-grid-connection/

Datacentres should be located close to where the generation occurs. It's been mostly Dublin up to now as that's where most of global connectivity lands and because the bulk of our island's generating capacity is centered around Dublin. That's why Apple were trying to locate theirs in Athenry, so it would be much closer to the source of wind generation along the west coast.

Directly, they don't employ many - but indirectly, Microsoft, Google and Facebook all have significant numbers of staff here, on high wages (high tax revenue), there are Irish companies who are being called upon all over the world to bulid datacentres based on the experience they've built up here, it's driving necessary investment into our electrical grid and broadband infrastructure (only it's the cart trying to drive the horses).

notAMember

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119339912#Comment_119339912

Came in here hoping Id see this. Globally, Ireland is perfect for datacenters.

Add politically stable as well, we don't have sworn enemies trying to blow us up, the terrorism threat to Ireland is low.

The technology facilitated by data centers isn't just the big cloud vendors, data services and tech centers like amazon, apple, dell, google, meta, msft... but think also about all the other technology applications run on those. Pharma, healthcare, ERP systems, banking, retail, airlines, education. We sell all of those things. We sell university educations. We sell medicines (this is Ireland's biggest export) We sell banking services, call center services, etc etc etc. All of that has a backbone of data.

plodder

Surprised nobody has posted about the datacentre outages in London recently:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-19/google-oracle-data-centers-knocked-offline-by-london-heat

[Deleted User]

There's a huge issue with digital waste. Because so many data services are free, or fixed price not related to usage or capacity, we tend to use these services wastefully. We don't thing about how many emails we send or receive, or how many WhatsApps or Snapchat messages. We use video to communicate by default, when often other methods would work just as well. We archive all our photos in the cloud, including the 99% of photos that we're never going to look at or see again.

https://gerrymcgovern.com/how-to-reduce-digital-waste/

All that data centre usage, that's us.

tom1ie

So if there’s a shortage of gas there’s a shortage of electricity.

If there’s a shortage of electricity there’s a shortage of water.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119369820#Comment_119369820

Honest to god, time you got a hobby.

Moaning about having to WFH, moaning about cars, moaning about brake and tyre particles and now moaning about digital waste of all things.

What an utterly bizarre thing to categorize as waste considering how cheap data storage is these days.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119379937#Comment_119379937

Let me know when you're ready to explore the reality of why data centre capacity is so cheap.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119381978#Comment_119381978

Human innovation and capitalism. Making our world more comfortable, enjoyable and healthier. Or would you rather all innovation was outlawed and us still using computer punch cards?

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119382055#Comment_119382055

I’d rather we didn’t upload billions of photos and videos that we’re never going to look at again to cloud services that are filling up data centres that are a very significant user of limited energy and water resources.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119382136#Comment_119382136

You're having a laugh. Limited water resources in Ireland. That's like saying the Sahara is running out of sand.

As for energy, there's plenty of ways to produce energy, including nuclear if it comes to that.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119382248#Comment_119382248

Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but we had a couple of years of uproar a few years back over the “water comes from the sky” story.

But yeah, you get those nukes sorted, and then we can pi$$ away our energy supplies storing sh1te that we’re never going to use.

Ironically Nuclear power plants use vast quantities of water!

BTW storing photos uses very little data relatively speaking.

And of course water does just fall from the sky. In Ireland it is laughable to claim that we have any issues with water. Yes we may well have issues with having enough infrastructure (piping, pumping and processing) to get the water where the demand is. But that is relatively easy to fix.

Of course data centers should and I assume do pay for the water they use and that money should be reinvested back in our water infrastructure. Same with Electricity.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119385688#Comment_119385688

Relatively speaking? Relative to what? Photos and videos are wasting vast amounts of data centres storage, because 99.9% of them will never be touched or used again. They’re going up to the cloud because we can’t be arsed decided which 1 or 2 of the 100 photos we take on a night out are actually worth keeping.

But if you want to get the infrastructural issues with water management that have challenged our country for decades sorted first, then I’ll stop moaning about storage.

Just build the pipeline to Shannon and our issues are sorted. It really isn't rocket science.

Plus, the fact that people have been talking about water managment challenges for decades, but non of us in Dublin have actually ever run out of drinking water, show that it is really blown out of proportion.

The odd house pipe ban for a week or two in Summer show that it really isn't that big of a deal. The reason the Shannon pipe line project keeps getting pushed off is because it really isn't that urgent. If we needed it that badly, we would just do it.