re: How real is a water scarcity threat, re: Building Data Centers?

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The good....generation capacity is struggling to keep in in Louisiana, and all of MISO, even today. Entergy cannot support its own load and is purchasing from the market today. That bring up the cost of generation (supply and demand). With the building of new generation units, they will bring the supply up, hopefully, the demand down, and level off the price of capacity in MISO and specifically, Zone 9.

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That’s certainly the angle Entergy is trying to push publicly. Again the details are super muddy, but it sounds like some of the added scope is extra connectivity with the larger MISO system. I assume that this is intended to address criticism about how the new generation would only benefit Meta. But it’s hard to trust anyone involved here, especially when the details are secret.

Maintenance is one concerning aspect, but how do we even know that Meta’s contract is enough to cover Meta’s portion of the initial investment + return on capital? For example if Meta’s contract guarantees them up to, say, 75% of the real-world average capacity of the new generators, then they should be paying at least 75% of the depreciation and 75% of the guaranteed return on capital over the life of the contract (you could argue it should be more if the contract is only 15 years, but I can see both sides of that). I’m sure it gets complicated if Meta is actually paying some portion of the initial capital investment up front, but that’s exactly why a regulated utility shouldn’t be able to do this behind closed doors.

To me that’s just as big of a concern as maintenance - the risk that the rate-paying public gets left on the hook for depreciation + return on capital, for generation capacity that isn’t even available to that same rate-paying public.

I think even some of them don’t understand all that is meant (and not meant) by “closed loop.”

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The existing self-powered industrial sites I've been on are on the order of 20MW or so, many of them were using waste heat or byproduct to run the plant as well. The data centers I've seen it explored for are over 100MW and projected future projects are over a GW

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I've contracted with industrials across MISO South and (some North) for as little as 40MW and as much as 110MW of capacity. There are some large industrials that have nice excess and make good money selling on the market.

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There is legislation in so rate payers won’t be burdened. Every project I hear about has energy production expansion built in to the project at the project’s expense, not existing rate payers.

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This paints a nice little comfortable picture for you, doesn't it? However, its more complicated than that. Every new build, transmission upgrade, maintenance cost goes into the MISO tariff charges that are socialized throughout all of MISO market participants in the form of transmission charges. Bottom line....we all pay, whether you are Entergy customer (will handle a larger burden because Entergy has stakeholders), DEMCO, LUS, CLECO or some other small coop.

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How many folks opining here do you think have taken the second semester chem engr course about Heat and Material Balances. ?

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Taken? Or passed? Asking for a friend.

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Water consumption is nowhere near the issue it once was. For reasons that I and others in this thread have pointed out. It's being used as a scare tactic by groups opposed to data center construction, either for NIMBY reasons, or political reasons.

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Even places in Florida that were once considering using potable reclaimed drinking water (flush it today, faucet tomorrow) in their systems are starting to say we don't even need it anymore.

Go look at what a brewery or bottled water plant pulls all day everyday 365. They can at least put data centers on a closed loop.

FTR, Meta has already sold like, north of 60% of the rights of the data center in Holly Ridge to another company.

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Yes, they force upgrades by the utility companies that pass the cost of that onto all the other customers when it only really benefits the data center.

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Which examples are you referring to specifically. I know of many data centers pay for these upgrades in order to get the city/town to let them build.

I genuinely want to learn more. The only “no big deal” comments I’ve seen are referencing closed loop systems. That’s not all that meaningful as it pertains to water consumption.

Are they rejecting heat to air, using fans? I’d heard that was less popular due to noise.

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Are they rejecting heat to air, using fans? I’d heard that was less popular due to noise

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Might also be a matter of scale.

Worth noting: I think the new power plants in LA are supposed to be using some method of air cooling which should significantly reduce the water use.