I see frequent mentions of AI wasting water. Is this one such setup, perhaps with the CDU using the facility's water supply for evaporative cooling?
replies(6):
The whole AI-water conversation is sort of tiring, since water just moves to more or less efficient parts or locations in the water cycle - I think a "total runtime energy consumption" metric would be much more useful if it were possible to accurately price in water-related externalities (ie - is a massive amount of energy spent moving water because a datacenter evaporates it? or is it no big deal?). And the whole thing really just shows how inefficient and inaccurately priced the market for water is, especially in the US where water rights, price, and the actual utility of water in a given location are often shockingly uncorrelated.
The margin at which it makes sense to save water varies wildly by location, but the cultural dominance of the western USA infiltrates everything.
Here in Zürich, my office briefly installed water saving taps. This is a city of less than half a million where the government maintains 1,200 fountains that spew drinkable water 24/7. But someone at the California HQ said saving water is important and someone at the Swiss subsidiary said yes sir we'll look into it right away sir.
We live in an area surrounded by grass fed cows, so what does it matter if we throw away 3/4 of our steak?
Without regard to how plentiful resources are in our particular area, being needlessly wasteful is in bad taste more than anything. It's a lack of appreciation of the value of what we have.
For water specifically - it is generally speaking the most valuable resource available, we just don't appreciate it because we happen to have a lot of it.
Comparing to energy costs isn't the same because using the energy for the incandescent bulb consumes that energy permanently. The gas/coal/fuel can't be un-burned. Although solar changes this as the marginal cost of that energy is free.
Comparing to food is similar. Once the food is wasted it is gone.
Water is typically not destroyed, it's just moved around in the water cycle. Water consumption in a region is dictated by the throughput the water cycle replenishes the reservoirs you're pulling from. "Waste" with water is highly geographic, and it's pretty reasonable to take exception to California projecting their problems to geographic regions that they aren't important.
There's plenty of areas where there's more rainfall, than there is outflow/evaporation, with water continuously replenishing deep groundwater. "Saving water" in such areas is of little concern besides the basic, economic one of well maintenance - each one can only pull so much, and more usage means more wells, and more upkeep.