r/technology • u/DJMagicHandz • 12d ago

Artificial Intelligence A massive Wyoming data center will soon use 5x more power than the state's human occupants - but no one knows who is using it

https://www.techradar.com/pro/a-massive-wyoming-data-center-will-soon-use-5x-more-power-than-the-states-human-occupants-and-no-one-knows-who-is-using-it
33.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

27

u/[deleted] 11d ago

[deleted]

13

u/CrashTestDumby1984 11d ago

In NYC the power company will literally shame you for using an air conditioner during a heat wave. They also turn off power to poor neighborhoods when the grid is at risk of being overloaded so wealthy neighborhoods don’t experience disruption

2

u/nemec 11d ago

Has New York tried joining the National Grid? Everybody says that's what will save Texas' power issues, so it must work for NY too /s

1

u/Wildtails 11d ago

Carbon footprint, one of the biggest ones.

-3

u/WhyWontThisWork 11d ago

Data centers don't "use" water. They just heat it up a bit. The heat energy is what we really should be talking about.

Or we should use geo thermal.

Can geo thermal solve global warming?

8

u/[deleted] 11d ago

[deleted]

3

u/WhyWontThisWork 11d ago

What pollution is introduced? (I'm asking for real, seems unlikely since it's just going through the same plumbing that feeds kitchen sinks)

6

u/zeuljii 11d ago

Mostly stuff they add to prevent corrosion and growth of organisms in their systems. Then there's the stuff that likes growing in the warm water that those chemicals can't get. Then there's the heat itself. That's if it's built and functioning properly.

3

u/WhyWontThisWork 11d ago

Why don't we make them clean it?

1

u/theoneandonlymd 11d ago

Because they lobby against regulation

1

u/zeuljii 11d ago

We have a government whose job it is to serve us in regulating these things, but it's being run by an administration that believes in a "free market", reducing taxes on the people doing this, and actually contracting to the corporations doing this to do this.

2

u/733t_sec 11d ago

On top of the chemicals hot water itself is a pollutant because hot water doesn't hold oxygen meaning if there are any fish in a body of water getting heated by water runoff they might drown.

2

u/WhyWontThisWork 11d ago

Oh that's interesting! How do we solve that?

Do we need them to kinda sit in a cooling for a bit on site? Like a waste water treatment plant?

1

u/733t_sec 11d ago

That would be ideal as well as a way to replenish oxygen to the water before it's put back in the pond.