Potential data center in Oregon would use closed-loop cooling system

Oregon city administrator Joel Mazur and other officials met with the potential data center developer last week, and he said they were told that a closed-loop cooling system would be used, should a new data center be built in the city.

A data center, as many people know, is essentially a giant room of servers. Because the equipment uses a lot of power and generates a lot of heat, it has to be in a climate controlled and cooled environment to extend the life of the equipment.

The closed-loop cooling method would use water in a more efficient way.

“Basically, the heat is generated inside of the server, and that is where they run the closed-loop water cooling system through the servers at the chip level to create an efficiency, or a cooling,” Mazur said. “It creates efficiency for the equipment to cool. It reduces the amount of water usage greatly by doing this.”

Mazur said they will initially have to fill the system with water, but after that they would only have to periodically top it off over a period of several months.

On top of that, Mazur said the closed-loop system is something older data centers, older than five years, typically did not use.

“That's one of the misnomers of this proposed data center is that it won't be a closed-loop system, but many of the companies that build data centers now are using closed-loop systems because they want to be good stewards of the water systems that they're connected to, and because there is an efficiency component to using these closed-loop systems to do what they intend to do, which is cool the their server equipment at the source where the heat is generated,” Mazur said.

Mazur said there will still be a component of air cooling because of heat that will be generated going into the air, in which case they’ll have the HVAC systems to manage that warm air.

Water utility costs differ from electric costs

Mazur said electric costs are based on a commodity, so the rates adjust based on supply and demand.

Water, meanwhile, is publicly owned in Oregon and that means the more users in the system, the lower the cost.

“As a publicly owned system, we're a pass-through entity, so any expenses in the system are passed on to the rate payers,” he said. “The entire water system is comprised of the water intake, the water treatment plant, and all the pipes in the ground that lead up to each individual water customer and up to the meter. Even the meter infrastructure is included in the overall expenses. In our system, and any water system, the more customers you have on the system, the better it is for the rate payers.

“All of the fixed asset expenses are spread out over a bigger pool of people. The more users we have on the system is better. It keeps rates lower because you have more users. We have fixed asset costs, and those fixed asset costs are the water treatment plant, the employees, any repairs … periodically we'll have water main breaks. We have to repair those breaks. Periodically we have to replace water lines like we did on Seaman Road.

“All of the regular maintenance on the system are expenses, and that's from the treatment plants and the pipes in the ground, to replacing meters. All of those fixed asset costs get spread out over all of the customers on the water system.”

Water usage

Mazur also said that the meeting provided more details on how much water the data center could use, and how that would affect rates locally.

On an average day, the proposed data center would use somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 gallons of water per day.

“And that’s really just potable use, so bathrooms, sinks, and kitchens for the people that will be occupying the building such as the workers,” he said.

Mazur said city officials did an analysis internally to see how the data center’s water usage would compare to other users on the system in the city. On the high end of 30,000 gallons per day, the data center would rank as the 20th largest user on the system.

“If we use the high end, 30,000 gallons a day, and compare it to all of the other users that are on our system, then this user would be the 20th largest user on our water system — meaning there would be 19 other users on our system that use more water on a daily basis.”

Those larger users would be places like schools, hospitals, and other industries, and Mazur gave an unofficial estimate that there are approximately 8,000 meters currently being used in the system, the vast majority of which are residential.

Data center forum

These are the types of questions that Mazur suspects could come up at the data center forum inside Fasset Middle School on Nov. 19 at 6 p.m.

Representatives from Capacity LLC will be on hand to answer questions at the event. They are a company that does the legwork for the end-users.

Mazur said the public is invited, and he encourages everyone to attend and ask questions. The forum will also be recorded and posted to the city website sometime soon after its conclusion.