Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 36. Sunrise is 6:40 AM and sunset 7:17 PM for 12h 37m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 53.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1974, NASA’s Mariner 10 becomes the first space probe to fly by Mercury.
The Foxconn site hasn’t met its promise in Wisconsin, so various development types are scrounging around to find something to do with that empty space. The latest plan involves a data center from Microsoft. Sounds good, right? Big company, coming to Wisconsin… finally something good after empty promises of billions and billions in investment? No.
Corrinne Hess reports Microsoft is planning a $1 billion data center on Foxconn site. Here’s what we know about jobs, water use at data centers:
Microsoft announced plans this week to purchase 315-acres to build a $1 billion data center on the sprawling Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant.
….
Data centers don’t require many workers
For the last 10 years, the Potawatomi Business Development Corp. has quietly operated a 45,000-square-foot data center at the former Concordia College campus on Milwaukee’s west side.
Inside are thousands of computers that store data for large and small private and public companies and the state of Wisconsin.
Despite the $30 million operation, only eight people work at the data center, said Ryan Brooks. vice president and general manager of Data Holdings Data Center, the company that operates the facility for Potawatomi.
“Data centers don’t bring a bunch of fanfair,” Brooks said. “It’s a big building for computers, not a huge number of employees. At the end of the day, the computers are doing the work.”
….
Data centers use as much water as small cities
Tens of thousands of computers in one space are hot.
Large amounts of evaporated water is used to keep computers from overheating and ensure data centers can run 24/7. This includes cooling towers, chillers, pumps, humidifiers and computer room air conditioners.
Venkatesh Uddameri, director of the Water Resources Center at Texas Tech University, told NBC News a typical data center uses three to five million gallons of water a day, the same amount of water as a city of 30,000-50,000 people.
Both Google and Microsoft have pledged to be more climate conscious by 2030.
This is good money after bad. The WEDC is wasting its time trying to convince anyone that the latest plan somehow alleviates past errors. It’s one long, ongoing fiasco, with new errors following old errors.
See FREE WHITEWATER’s Foxconn category for a dedicated link about the chronic debacle that is Foxconn in Wisconsin.
How ‘Star Wars’ Creatures Come to Life:
Microsoft is actively working on reducing data-center water usage: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2023/03/22/water-positive-climate-resilience-open-call/
Data-center water usage is one of the more benign applications, assuming you don’t use ground-water. Water comes in cold, goes out warmer, and doesn’t get contaminated in the process. The major issue is warming up the lake, presuming that is where they will get the water. Hot water does have some uses, both industrially and domestically, for process heating and home heating. It can also be used, like geothermal power plants do, to make electricity, which will further cool it on the way back to the lake.
This is good information, and it reduces my concern about water usage.
My objections do invite a reply: are you opposed to any mitigation? Obviously, I prefer an economic environment where the WEDC has no role, even in touting projects like this.
But it’s a strong & rational argument to say that some use should be made of yesterday’s failed effort. ‘Some use’ deserves better vetting than Wisconsin has done previously. That vetting may lead to credible objections, or in the case of water usage, unfounded objections. If the objection’s unfounded, or overwrought, then out it should and must go. One follows rational consideration.
One final point, I cannot be sure about: how will this announcement, a week before local elections in Mount Pleasant in which incumbents who backed Foxconn are under challenge, influence, if at all, those races? Here’s A Better Mount Pleasant’s statement after the Microsoft announcement: https://www.facebook.com/100080085771006/posts/pfbid021YU4ZtixXtns2BuZdbf355duEdV1s52NxuMkG7hud2P96e3KvmSo3PEDcc66kAdfl/?app=fbl
It’s been a vicious campaign against the challengers’ group.
Water usage, however, should be evaluated on its own merits.
I agree that WEDC has botched the whole FoxConn situation badly, and it is true that there will not be a lot of people working there if Microsoft comes thru. The deal may actually happen, as Microsoft has a MUCH better history of actually getting things done than FoxConn.
At this point, I think that anything that helps the PP residents recoup their massive sunk costs in infrastructure is a good thing. This, should it happen, is incremental, but at least a start to doing so.
I’ve not followed the local politics of PP very closely. Do you think this is just another evanescent attempt to shuck the voters, and it will evaporate on 4-5?
Microsoft’s effort might stick, as you’ve noted they are not as mercurial as Foxconn. It’s easier by far to bet against Foxconn than Microsoft.
Update, added line: I don’t see why this announcement could not have been held off until after the local election.
I’m not sure how that Mt. Pleasant municipal election vote will go.
I’ve followed the campaign, but not nearly so closely that I have a feel for the outcome.
When I followed the Mequon-Thiensville school board races as an outsider, I found that the vote was more clear-cut than I had expected (that was a positive outcome from my perspective, but one for which I had no predictive confidence).
One wishes that a decision like this included more effort to take already in use ideas to then identify adjacent places where there could be a more environmentally conscious arrangement. Of note are any number of recent articles that show just the kind of creative planning that should have been considered in this attempt to fix what was a bad deal that then fell apart. A phrase that seems to emerge all too often lately: That’s not good enough.
The timing of, and this deal generally speaking simply aren’t good enough for Wisconsin and the immediate neighboring communities.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64939558
https://www.popsci.com/technology/data-center-heat-pool/