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Evaporating a gallon of water eats about 2.5 KWhr. Buying a gallon of municipal water costs me about 0.6¢, or about 2% of the equivalent amount of electricity.

Evaporating a gallon of water eats about 2.5 KWhr. Buying a gallon of municipal water costs me about 0.6¢, or about 2% of the equivalent amount of electricity. AC is efficient, so say we'd only have to increase water prices by about 500% to make it not worth it to use evaporative cooling. Your claim is that increasing the price of a basic utility by several hundred percent to prevent a company from using a huge amount of it is a fake problem? That sounds like complete bullshit to me, and I don't even live in a city that's collapsing into the ground due to aquifer overuse.

Robotbeat 2y ago
If you are literally drawing so much from the aquifers that the city is collapsing into the ground, I think the water probably is mispriced. And there’s no reason you have to charge industrial users of water less than residential users if the real price (meaning the cost to replace that water) is higher than the residential price. 0.6¢/gallon is less than I pay and I live in a wet city. I pay about 2¢/gallon. So for industrial electricity rates of 5-7¢/kWh, A/C is approximately a wash vs using residential water for cooling.
- thfuran 2y ago
  >If you are literally drawing so much from the aquifers that the city is collapsing into the ground, I think the water probably is mispriced. Cool story. But every human needs water, and no data center needs water. Why should every person have to pay more to live just to prevent Amazon from breaking the world for a tiny increase in profits?
  - Robotbeat 2y ago
    “And there’s no reason you have to charge industrial users of water less than residential users if the real price (meaning the cost to replace that water) is higher than the residential price” …is what I said. You can, of course, charge residential users less for the first 100 or 1000 gallons of monthly use, as is common for utilities in the US. Good faith engagement on this topic probably requires thinking for 5 seconds if the objection you raised isn’t easily addressed by common methods already. Additionally, industrial/industrial-scale-agricultural uses of water are almost always more sensitive to water prices. An incredibly poor population would benefit from the tax revenues and jobs offered by companies moving in.

Robotbeat 2y ago

If you are literally drawing so much from the aquifers that the city is collapsing into the ground, I think the water probably is mispriced. And there’s no reason you have to charge industrial users of water less than residential users if the real price (meaning the cost to replace that water) is higher than the residential price. 0.6¢/gallon is less than I pay and I live in a wet city. I pay about 2¢/gallon. So for industrial electricity rates of 5-7¢/kWh, A/C is approximately a wash vs using residential water for cooling.

thfuran 2y ago
>If you are literally drawing so much from the aquifers that the city is collapsing into the ground, I think the water probably is mispriced. Cool story. But every human needs water, and no data center needs water. Why should every person have to pay more to live just to prevent Amazon from breaking the world for a tiny increase in profits?
- Robotbeat 2y ago
  “And there’s no reason you have to charge industrial users of water less than residential users if the real price (meaning the cost to replace that water) is higher than the residential price” …is what I said. You can, of course, charge residential users less for the first 100 or 1000 gallons of monthly use, as is common for utilities in the US. Good faith engagement on this topic probably requires thinking for 5 seconds if the objection you raised isn’t easily addressed by common methods already. Additionally, industrial/industrial-scale-agricultural uses of water are almost always more sensitive to water prices. An incredibly poor population would benefit from the tax revenues and jobs offered by companies moving in.