Lone Star State emerging as a hot spot in February of 2025<\/a>. That’s when we met Dan Stanzione, the executive director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, or TACC, at the University of Texas at Austin, which is home to the nation’s largest academic supercomputer.\u00a0<\/p>\n“Our basic problem is the power per chip keeps going up … so, we need new and exotic ways to cool it,” Stanzione said.<\/p>\n
TACC houses several supercomputers that calculate complex problems for research. Higher power computer chips generate a lot of heat. While many traditional data centers, like cryptocurrency facilities, rely on a lot of water to keep servers cool, TACC utilizes newer cooling options, without the need for water. The first is called immersion cooling.<\/p>\n
“This is immersion \u2013 as you can see, the computer is sitting here immersed in fluid,” Stanzione said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Types of fluids used include mineral oil and others that don’t conduct electricity. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The second option is called direct liquid cooling, the popular approach for AI facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You run fluid up into the rack, and we just sort of pump it across the chip over a heat sink, but the fluid never actually touches the chip,” Stanzione said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While water isn’t used to cool the servers, both systems use a closed water loop to carry heat away from the fluids used. Stanzione said TACC has used the same 1 million gallons of water in that system since 2012. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“If we look under here … those are the main water lines, right, that come in and out, bringing the cold water up and down,” Stanzione said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conserving water is one reason; Stanzione said liquid cooling is the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So, I’ve seen almost every data center that we’ve talked to, you know, has gone from, ‘We’re not really going to do liquid-cooled to the rack,’ to, ‘We’re only going to do liquid-cooled to the rack,’ and all of it in the last five or six years. It’s been a very rapid change,” Stanzione said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That rapid change follows rapid growth. According to July figures from the state grid operator, ERCOT, 688 data center projects are asking to connect to the power grid. But a new Batch Zero process, where ERCOT studies all data center projects at once instead of one at a time, only shows 326 of those projects can move forward. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The study is now on hold as ERCOT plans to wrap up the audit by Dec. 10, 2026. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Those numbers are on top of the 338 operational facilities \u2013 160 under construction and 309 planned, according to Baxtel, a data center market and intelligence firm that tracks data centers all around the world. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
A further breakdown shows 93 data centers in Austin that are operational, under construction or planned. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Eric Bell is a managing partner at Baxtel. He said while Virginia has more total data center sites, Texas will be clearly ahead in 2027 due to the sheer number of planned projects. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Operational \u2013 338 sites\u00a0Construction \u2013 160 sites\u00a0Planned \u2013 309 sites \u00a0 <\/p>\n
Virginia \u2013 782 sites \u00a0<\/p>\n
Operational \u2013 396 sites\u00a0Construction \u2013 90 sites\u00a0Planned \u2013 268 sites\u00a0 <\/p>\n
A JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle) analysis shows Texas is home to nearly 9 gigawatts of existing capacity with 18 gigawatts under construction. JLL is one of the largest global commercial real estate services firms. According to senior analyst Ben Davalos on the Data Center Research Team, Virginia has more than 9 gigawatts of existing capacity with nearly 4 gigawatts under construction. One gigawatt of electricity can power between 200,000 to 250,000 homes in Texas during peak demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dan Diorio is the executive vice president over policy and government affairs with the Data Center Coalition. He said data centers are part of our daily lives.<\/p>\n
“Every online, classroom, every telehealth appointment, electronic healthcare record, every online purchase, 911 geolocation services, state and local governments, military and defense applications rely on the digital infrastructure provided by data centers,” Diorio said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A UT Austin study released in May shows right now, data centers use less than 0.5% of the state’s water. But continued growth could push that number up to 3% to 9% by 2040, which is a big concern for the state with existing water supply issues. The 2027 state water plan calls for $174 billion for thousands of water supply projects and management strategies over the next 50 years or communities could face shortages.<\/p>\n
Doirio said there are also misconceptions about data centers and water use. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We use less than food and beverage production. We use less than semiconductor manufacturing. We use less water than what’s lost to water leaks in municipal water systems on an annual basis,” Doirio said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Back at TACC, Stanzione walked us through the evolution of servers and how they’re cooled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We just blow air through it as fast as we can to cool off the chips,” Stanzione said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stanzione said they’re always experimenting with cooling strategies because reducing the industry’s water use is the only way forward in a drought-stricken and growing state like Texas. \u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the Brookings Institute, a nonpartisan public policy think tank, a typical data center uses 300,000 gallons of water each day, the same demands of about 1,000 homes. Larger data centers can use an estimated 5,000,000 gallons a day, equivalent to a town of 50,000 people. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But part of the problem in Texas is that there isn’t current information about how much water Texas data centers use. State regulators tried to get that information, but most companies ignored the surveys, even though providing that information is state law. That’s why Gov. Greg Abbott issued a directive in August to freeze all new data center projects until state regulators can find out how much water and power they use. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Water fears persist as data center projects continue to boom throughout the state. AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Texas is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-430309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}