Why should your data centers need Water Storage and Conservation?

When we talk about the green data centers, more than often it is about conservation of energy, power-efficiency and about the renewable sources to generate green energy. But we always tend to miss on the most critical element of the nature that we are wasting relentlessly, and that is WATER. Apart from huge power consumption, large cloud computing data centers rely on huge water supplies to run their facilities. Some of these large data centers consume electricity enough to light up a city, likewise, they also consume around a million gallons of water every day.

Perhaps we can still manage to survive if there would be no fuel left on the earth by utilizing the massive solar and wind energy. But life is not possible without fresh water. World is already dealing with the water scarcity issues and such huge amount of water consumption by data center industry is like adding fuel to the fire. However, data centers have been alarmed with the water shortage issues, thus have started taking efforts to save the water.

Here are the solutions adopted by data centers for water storage and conservation:

Data center managers are identifying solutions to consume lesser freshwater, and rely on the alternative sources for their water requirements in the facility.

• Reduced water consumption: The first step to reduce on water consumption is to design the data center with efficient water management for cooling systems.
• Rainwater harvesting: This is one of the best methods for water storage and management across all the industries around the world. Storage tanks and cisterns are used to store the rainwater. Many green data centers in India and worldwide are using rainwater harvesting method to conserve water.
• Recycling water: data centers are also coming up with the systems that recycle the non-drinkable water (water from sinks, showers, washing machines etc.) for cooling the facilities.
• Cold climate regions for data centers: There are many climatic regions that are naturally cold which act as the most ideal place to build data centers which will consume lesser amount of energy as well as lesser water too. These places are the first choice of green data center providers.

Save Water. Each drop matters.