this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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A.I. tools fueled a 34% spike in Microsoft’s water consumption, and one city with its data centers is concerned about the effect on residential supply (fortune.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] bhmnscmm 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you want to talk about water treatment capacity, then sure. Treatment capacity is used for cooling.

That's not what I'm talking about though. I'm talking about the mass of water being consumed (i.e., removed) from the watershed. The water removed from the river for cooling is returned. There is no net loss of water.

[–] Sconrad122 2 points 1 year ago

There is a net loss of potable water (or potable water capacity, if you prefer), which is often a capacity bottleneck before non-potable water due to the infrastructure required to generate it. However, according to a comment above, Microsoft is using evaporative coolers, which specifically work by losing water (through evaporation). It's not a 100% loss rate to the watershed, but it's not net zero either