- The zero-water evaporation system will practically eliminate the use of water in data centers belonging to Microsoft
- This will save tens of billions of liters of water during the lifespan of Microsoft data centers fleet
- The key to providing this solution was to implement cooling solutions in large scale fleas
Microsoft has introduced a new design of data centers that eliminates the need for water evaporation in cooling, meeting concerns about the use of water in regions faced with shortages and dryness.
This new cooling system, launched in August 2024, optimizes the workloads of the AI while retaining water and is part of the Community engagement of Datacenter from Microsoft, helping to support local communities and reduce the environmental impact.
The system works using liquid cooling at the chips, which provides precise temperature control without relying on water evaporation. Although water is still used for administrative needs such as toilets and kitchens, the cooling system itself does not require fresh water.
Pilot sites will be live next year
The system works on a closed loop, which means that the water is continuously diffused between the servers and the coolers without the need to be reconstructed. Liquid cooling in closed loop was used by overclockers (including me) for years to maintain stable temperatures during heavy resource workloads, making it a natural adjustment for modern data centers with their requests Intensive AI.
The efficiency of water in data centers is measured using the effectiveness of water use (WUE), which calculates water consumption in relation to energy consumption. Microsoft says that by switching to liquid cooling in a closed loop, it plans to save more than 125 million liters of water per year, by data center.
“We have been working since the early 2000s to reduce the use of water and improved our WUE by 80% since our first generation of data centers,” said Steve Solomon, Vice-President, Datacenter Infraineering, Microsoft.
“While the challenges of water become more extreme, we know that we have more work to do. The transition to next generation data centers should help reduce our WUE to zero for each data center using zero water evaporation. While our fleet is developing over time, this change will help further reduce Microsoft’s Fleetwide WUE. “”
New data centers in Phoenix, Arizona and Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, will serve as pilot sites for this technology in 2026. All future Microsoft data centers will adopt this cooling approach in the future, the first sites that should be operational in 2027.
The elimination of evaporation cooling increases the efficiency of power consumption (stinking), as mechanical cooling requires more energy. However, the use of high -efficiency economic coolers and high cooling temperatures will compensate for part of this request.
