Co-optimization of Energy and Water Demands to Enable Rapid but Resilient Expansion of Data Centers

Data centers consume substantial amounts of electricity and can amplify water stress locally as well as in distant regions via their direct (for cooling) and indirect (for thermoelectric power generation) consumption of water. There is an opportunity to enhance energy-water resilience by developing novel methods for planning new data centers that co-optimize their energy and water demands to minimize stress on both energy and water systems in a given region. Resilience-informed development of data centers would require advances in both the understanding of the energy-water impacts of data centers and in simulation capabilities to quantify tradeoffs across interconnected systems. Ultimately these datasets and tools could form the basis for a capability wherein researchers could generate projections of the need for new data centers, site them at specific locations in the U.S., and then study the impact of those new facilities on energy and water systems locally (i.e., at the basin or water utility scale) and regionally (i.e., at the balancing authority [BA] scale). As data centers continue to be built across the country, it is becoming increasingly critical to measure and track their joint impact on energy and water systems.