Happy reading and Merry Christmas!

 Wednesday 18^th December will be our last meeting of 2024.

Time to sing the traditional song attributed to the Scottish poet Robert Burns.

Auld Lang Syne. (For times past)

 

Last Wednesday we touched on a subject that will make us all sit up and pay attention. Here is a summary. 

 

Data Centres which house our storage systems need a massive supply of water and electricity to create the air conditioning that keeps the temperature cool in these buildings.

These are physical building in our towns. The euphemistically named Cloud

‘And the water must be soft.’ Belino told us.

‘Can it be recycled?’ Antonio asked. Belino said that he  didn’t have that information.

Salvador quoted a national paper saying that Big Tech in Talavera de la Reina planned to produce 248 megawatts using 504, 000,000 litres of water for an installation for Meta.  The Hydro graphic Department of the Tagus in Spain doubted that it would be possible to provide that amount of water and the company had to reduce its expectations.

Antonio said the number of megawatts is not important, what is important is the water supply. ‘So there is always a river nearby to supply the water.’ Obviously local communities worry about the impact the presence of data centres will have on their water and their grids

  Belino countered that it is of importance because that amount of electricity can only be supplied by fossil fuels such as gas or petrol.

Salvador mentions the clean energy Aerothermics which he has in his house explaining that it refrigerates the hot air in summer and heats the cold air in winter providing hot water all year round. Pedro explains that it takes the air in and out constantly.                           

Alicia has heard that data centres need to receive a constant supply of water and Big Tech may consider building nuclear power points to provide a source of energy to maintain the desired temperatures.

Pedro gave us the example of the Metro Madrid data centre that uses the equivalent in one year of all the houses in Spain in one day. He told us that some data centres rent the space, a room or a rack depending on the company’s needs. This is known as Hosting and Housing. Others own their buildings.

Alicia suggests that we need governments to assess the impact of data centres on the environment.

 Salvador believes governments should regulate the abuse of power supplies, the same way as they regulated the use of drones.

As for the car industry, Belino said that electric batteries cannot supply our needs because of the vast amount of copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt needed. He also told us that another hopeful idea, the use of Green Hydrogen is not viable again because of the scale of the problem.

Antonio told us the humorous story about a sprawl of cables under the ground all over Paris that were used fifty years ago but not anymore, A huge mess which is known as La Machine,

 We would like to think it will sort itself out the way changeovers have done in the past.

 ‘Think out of the box,’ Antonio said.

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