> The initial design of the data center used evaporative coolers to eliminate the added expense of energy-demanding chillers. However, while the cooling towers were more efficient and less expensive, they would consume approximately 2 million gallons of water annually to support cooling of the IT load—approaching an hourly average of 1 megawatt.
Industrial scale closed loop cooling is relatively recent technology.
> In August 2016, a prototype thermosyphon cooler—an advanced dry cooler that uses refrigerant in a passive cycle to dissipate heat—was installed at NREL. The thermosyphon was placed upstream of the HPC Data Center cooling towers at the ESIF to create a hybrid cooling system. The system coordinates the operation for optimum water and operating cost efficiency—using wet cooling when it's hot and dry cooling when it's not.
> Although our current fleet will still use a mix of air-cooled and water-cooled systems, new projects in Phoenix, Arizona, and Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, will pilot zero-water evaporated designs in 2026. Starting August 2024, all new Microsoft datacenter designs began using this next-generation cooling technology, as we work to make zero-water evaporation the primary cooling method across our owned portfolio. These new sites will begin coming online in late 2027.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200604033055im_/https://www.nr...
That PUE of 1.028 is really good ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness ). And even with all of their closed loop parts of the system, they're still needing to reject heat from the cooling towers.
https://www.nrel.gov/computational-science/reducing-water-us...
> The initial design of the data center used evaporative coolers to eliminate the added expense of energy-demanding chillers. However, while the cooling towers were more efficient and less expensive, they would consume approximately 2 million gallons of water annually to support cooling of the IT load—approaching an hourly average of 1 megawatt.
Industrial scale closed loop cooling is relatively recent technology.
> In August 2016, a prototype thermosyphon cooler—an advanced dry cooler that uses refrigerant in a passive cycle to dissipate heat—was installed at NREL. The thermosyphon was placed upstream of the HPC Data Center cooling towers at the ESIF to create a hybrid cooling system. The system coordinates the operation for optimum water and operating cost efficiency—using wet cooling when it's hot and dry cooling when it's not.
It is a goal though... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/12...
> Although our current fleet will still use a mix of air-cooled and water-cooled systems, new projects in Phoenix, Arizona, and Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, will pilot zero-water evaporated designs in 2026. Starting August 2024, all new Microsoft datacenter designs began using this next-generation cooling technology, as we work to make zero-water evaporation the primary cooling method across our owned portfolio. These new sites will begin coming online in late 2027.
More northerly data centers are likely able to achieve a lower WEU. Again from Microsoft - https://datacenters.microsoft.com/sustainability/efficiency/