10+ hours of podcasts, in 5 minutes.
7 quotes from 1 episode on The Infrastructure Investor Podcast, each with a timestamped link to the source.
Dev Gupta states that the intense physical demands of AI compute force data center operators to adopt new cooling technologies and secure alternative water resources. Soaring consumption threatens community approval, leading builders to integrate desalination plants and gray water loops directly into their facilities.
Data center build costs reach $20 million per megawatt in Japan, compared to $7 million per megawatt in India and Southeast Asia.
“Build costs in places like India, Southeast Asia are typically in the $7 million per megawatt range. They go up to about 14, 15 in Australia, and they go up to about 17 to $20 million in Japan. Japan becoming the highest cost market.”
From Data Center Yields: Underwriting Hyperscale vs. Urban Colocation
Developers assess investment risk by comparing the stabilized yield on cost against the eventual capitalization rate upon selling the asset.
“What is my stabilized yield on cost versus what is the cap rate at which I can sell this asset, monetize this asset? And if that spread is sufficient to be able to take that risk, then take that risk.”
From Data Center Yields: Underwriting Hyperscale vs. Urban Colocation
Rising capacity limits local municipal water available for drinking and agriculture. Dev Gupta mentions that developers explore co-locating desalination plants and utilizing gray water to operate data centers and maintain social license.
“The water usage has gone absolutely berserk with the amount of capacity and it's causing the social license issue to be able to build and use a scarce resource which would otherwise have been for, you know, portable water reasons, agriculture, et cetera, for that geography…”
From Why Data Centers Are Adding Desalination and Direct-to-Chip Cooling
“So we are thinking of, for example, how can we co-locate desalination plants within the data center? How can we use gray water for usage in data centers? Besides the, obviously the liquid cooling closed loop technologies which use lesser and lesser of water.”
From Why Data Centers Are Adding Desalination and Direct-to-Chip Cooling
The industry moved rapidly from air and hybrid adiabatic systems to direct liquid cooling. Dev Gupta points out that this technological shift alters the fundamental cost profiles of building data centers.
“We've moved very quickly from purely air-cooled to water-cooled to hybrid adiabatic cooled to now direct to chip liquid cooled. And because of that change in technology, obviously costs have also changed.”
From Why Data Centers Are Adding Desalination and Direct-to-Chip Cooling
Developers increasingly adopt modular construction to meet capacity demands faster. Dev Gupta notes that digital twin modeling remains rare as traditional building practices still dominate the sector.
“Modularization and prefabrication of data centers to meet capacity faster, again, something that, uh, I think the industry is moving towards…”
From Why Data Centers Are Adding Desalination and Direct-to-Chip Cooling
“…digital twinning and AI for the building of AI for data centers is something that a lot of people still don't really adopt. It's still a traditional industry in that sense.”
From Why Data Centers Are Adding Desalination and Direct-to-Chip Cooling
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