Most people would not be surprised to learn that computer data centres need a lot of electricity and water for cooling.

“The federal government, and some provinces, have been actively courting investors, vaunting the country’s cheap electricity (much of it hydro power) and cool climate.”

Hey, that would be great, but Saskatchewan has some of the most expensive electricity due in part to having large coal generation at Estevan and Coronach. SaskPower intends to increase the cost to above 16 cents per kWh, while other provinces can get rates for hydro under or around 10 cents per kWh. So there is no argument to put a data centre in Regina’s suburb RM, if you consider the current cost of electricity.

Well then, Regina, Saskatchewan must have abundant water to cool this data centre, eh? Sorry, the mighty Wascana Creek is enough to water flowers at Wascana Park, but Regina pipes in its drinking water from Buffalo Pound north of Moose Jaw, many kilometres away. All that electricity for pumping isn’t being done on a green grid either. SaskPower planned in 2016 to be at 50% renewable by 2030, but is aiming to miss its target by a lot.

“A study done in 2023 estimated that generating between 10 and 50 medium-sized responses in ChatGPT — the AI-powered chatbot — consumed about 500 millilitres of water. That accounts for both the water required to produce the electricity needed to run the data centre (435 millilitres) and cool it down (the remaining 65 millilitres).”

Media has reported the Regina/Sherwood AI data centre as needing 300MW of electricity. That’s a huge number for Saskatchewan. When it spent over $1.5 billion on the under-performing Carbon Capture and Storage coal plant at Boundary Dam 3, it was only for 115MW of electricity! Minister Harrison’s baseless claim we have the power for projects, is not supported by SaskPower’s plan to be 50% renewable in 4 years. The Premier promised there would be no rate hike, then ~30 days later, there was a hike, in 2026. If we wait for the nuclear power the Premier mentioned, it’s not expected to begin operating for another 8+ years.

“Alistair Speirs, general manager of Microsoft’s Azure global infrastructure, acknowledges traditional industrial cooling has “been a very water-intensive process.” “One of the great things about building in Canada, and in colder climates, is that we can just use free air cooling from outside air temperatures.””

Unfortunately, it’s only reliably cold enough in Saskatchewan about 6 months of the year. And Saskatchewan doesn’t yet have the green grid needed to operate energy intensive industry without creating large GHG emissions. And our fresh water sources are limited more than many other southern cities in Canada.

Could it be possible to have a large data centre make sense in Regina? Possibly, but the technology is not implemented on our electrical grid yet. Bell is installing its own power generation using methane gas. Environmentally conscious businesses would consider solar & wind generation coupled with battery storage to shave SaskPower’s expensive peak demand charges, they wouldn’t install new fossil fuel electricity generation in 2026.

“SaskEnergy is to develop natural gas infrastructure for Bell’s on-site gas-fired power generation, to support the data centre’s peak operational demand as well as backup power generation.”

So long as the hardware is pushed to its absolute thermal limits, we’re depending on Bell meeting its commitment to use a closed-loop cooling system that won’t continually evaporate our drinking water. Perhaps if it wasn’t so far out of the city, it could more easily contribute to an electrically-heated district heating system. Otherwise, what cools the closed loop?

https://substack.com/@rachelgilmore/note/p-192146547?r=8jrw7