Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by dipierro on Sunday October 04, 2026 @07:22PM (#49958982)

I don’t think that 1MW is something older datacenters consumed. Unless you are talking about a single rack in a corporate server room.

It is a monthly consumption of a poorly insulated house with air conditioning running 24/7. Or around 1344 W of constant consumption.

Older DCs relied on much less efficient compute and cooling, and the only reason why their power usage could be less is simply much smaller scale.

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Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by crote on Sunday October 04, 2026 @08:19PM (#49959380)

You're confusing MW with MWh. Older DCs did indeed consume on the order of 1MW of continuous power, like the one at [0]. The 2012-dated DC at [1] has a redundant 22kW power feed per 42U rack, so that's ~500W per RU - which for most pre-AI servers was plenty.

With hyperscalers it of course went a bit beyond that due to the sheer number of racks, but 100MW would've been considered huge.

[0]: https://www.northcdatacenters.com/en/northc-datacenters/delf...

[1]: https://www.eurofiber.com/en-nl/data-centers-netherlands/dat...

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Re:Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and e... by cogman10 on Sunday October 04, 2026 @08:20PM (#49959386)

You are confusing MW with MWh and apparently kWh.

A single rack in a corporate server room consumes on the order of 10 to 20kW.

1MWh happens when you run a 1MW load for 1 hour. There are 1000 kWh in 1MWh and 1000 Wh in 1 kWh.

A home with 1344W of constant consumption would consume 32kWh per day.

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