Thirsty for power and water, AI-crunching data centers sprout across the West
Driving around the cities and small towns of the West, one of the most consequential changes to the landscape are hard to see. Data centers, the buildings of the future, are usually low-slung, their large bulk is best seen from above. A drone’s-eye view shows a spreading, warehouse-flat landscape born of the economic and electrical revolution that is reshaping places like Phoenix, the city of Santa Clara in Silicon Valley, or rural Oregon towns close to the Columbia River. … Heat is the enemy of data operations, reducing their efficiency or even making them inoperable. What creates the heat? The armies of servers gobbling up vast amounts of electricity. What cools it? A variety of technologies, with one, evaporative cooling, requiring significant amounts of water.
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