The comments below from Landon Marston, an associate professor at Virginia Tech’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering are taken from a Virginia Tech news release. Dr. Marston specializes in water resources engineering. His research focuses on the sustainability of water systems and the complex interconnections between water, energy, food, and infrastructure.
“The primary driver for energy consumption is the IT
equipment itself - the servers run 24/7 to process data. The second major
driver is cooling. All that electronic equipment generates a tremendous amount
of heat, and data centers must run massive cooling systems to keep servers from
overheating. AI-specific servers are especially power-hungry because of the
intense calculations they perform,” Marston said.
“Water's main role is in those cooling systems. Many large
data centers use evaporative cooling, which is very effective but can sometimes
consume as much water as a small city.”
In commenting on The White House’s recently released “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan to remove
barriers to American leadership in AI, Dr. Marston said: “It could lead to data
centers being built without adequate grid planning, increasing the risk of
local blackouts,” said Marston. “It could also allow facilities to be built
without proper consideration of local water availability, water infrastructure,
and financial agreements that ensure long-term sustainability of the water
system.”
However, approving nearly 90 million square feet of data centers in Prince William County without even
identifying if these will be the more energy intensive AI data centers has done
just that. Our utilities will have no opportunity to plan the massive
infrastructure necessary to support this demand that might only be short term.
As Dr. Marston pointed out: “The primary driver for energy
consumption is the IT equipment itself - the servers run 24/7 to process data.
The second major driver is cooling. All that electronic equipment generates a
tremendous amount of heat, and data centers must run massive cooling systems to
keep servers from overheating. AI-specific servers are especially power-hungry
because of the intense calculations they perform,” Marston said.
“Water's main role is in those cooling systems. Many large
data centers use evaporative cooling, which is very effective but can sometimes
consume as much water as a small city.”
Prince William County Board of Supervisors has approved hundreds
of rezoning requests without even carrying a tally of what the ultimate build
out total will be. These approvals were given without knowing if land will have
to be taken by eminent domain from homeowners to meet the transmission requirement
without obtaining a detailed layout of the site, despite detailed requests for
additional information from PWC staff. The proposed rezoning requests have
often been too general and did not provide sufficient details to even determine
the actual location of site features.
In the Digital Gateway rezoning the applicants never
submitted the maximum daily water demands and peak wastewater flows for each
phase of development, so the hydraulic capacity studies by the PW Service
Authority were not completed. This was and remains unacceptable. Impacts
on the water supply adequacy and the need for and costs of additional water
storage in the system were not addressed.
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