Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by se4u on Sunday October 04, 2026 @05:34PM (#49958121)

I dont like the olympic swimming pool comparisons so I converted to immigrant population comparisons. How many people's worth of electricity and water are the data centers consuming , of course all the analysis was done on gemini since we are talking about google data centers :) here's the output

> Data centers impact local utilities unevenly: while their water consumption is roughly equivalent to adding a small town of 25,000 people, their electrical footprint across the state exceeds the residential power needs of the entire population of Nebraska.

> Together, Google’s three Nebraska data center sites draw enough electricity to power up to 290,000 homes—equivalent to supplying the entire residential power grid for roughly one-third of Nebraska’s total population.

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Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by turtletontine on Sunday October 04, 2026 @06:43PM (#49958697)

Why do you say “immigrant population”?

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Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by se4u on Monday October 05, 2026 @03:12AM (#49961631)

you can say something like data centers are using as much electricity as if 33% new people started living in Nebraska. they are like our new neighbors. A new county of benevolent super-smart scientists in a data center.

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Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by superbatfish on Monday October 05, 2026 @03:44PM (#49969627)

I understood your point when I read it, and it didn't bother me. But the term inadvertently triggers a different hot-button issue in people's minds, so I think a clearer term might have been "marginal population increase".

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Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by JuniperMesos on Tuesday October 06, 2026 @03:02AM (#49975167)

I think triggering that hot-button issue was the point - the OP was likely expecting that people who are vehemently anti-data-center are also vehemently pro-immigration (which is probably an accurate generalization). So talking about the resource use of data centers by comparing to the resource use of immigrants has the potential to force cognitive dissonance in anti-data-center people who might otherwise use data center resource use as a straightforward talking point.

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Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by WarmWash on Sunday October 04, 2026 @06:04PM (#49958361)

Now compare to Nebraska's water usage...

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Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by CJefferson on Monday October 05, 2026 @08:52AM (#49964203)

The reason I dislike this is data centers aren’t houses, they are industry. Industry and farms takes up more power and water than some peoples houses, because your house doesn’t need to create the power and food and stuff you need to survive.

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