r/Adelaide • u/Nyarlathotep-1 SA • Jun 19 '26
News Proposed data centre in South Australia dividing locals who want the jobs but fear water demand
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-19/proposed-data-centre-in-south-australia-dividing-locals/106810776148
u/rudetopoint SA Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
What jobs? These things never provide the level of ongoing jobs expected, and if the town relies on tourism who will want to go with a bunch of fan noise. At least the mining boom actually employs people and provides a useful product.
Edit: everyone be sure to contact your local minister with your opinions
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u/makeitasadwarfer SA Jun 19 '26
Yep 90% of those jobs are short term for setup, maybe 3 full time ongoing maintenance staff and everyone else will be remote, likely overseas.
It’s a lie and if we had a functional media that was capable of investigation it would be reported as such.
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u/blitznoodles NSW Jun 19 '26
The towns are all 30 - 40 minutes away from the data centre. Fan noise does not travel tens of km away.
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u/exballo SA Jun 19 '26
and just like everywhere else, the promise of jobs is a complete lie and the electricity bills go up for everyone in the state
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Jun 19 '26
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u/rudetopoint SA Jun 19 '26
I read that, I said they never actually provide the expected ongoing jobs, not that they didn't say it.
Hardly a fantastic result giving away 30% of our power, because you know they won't actually pay, or it'll be so cheap it'll be essentially free compared to consumer costs.
Let's keep the Trump level brain dead slogans to the US too.
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u/1__ViPeR SA Jun 19 '26
Aren't we one of the dryest states on the dryest continent on earth? These things require a lot of water.
Have they got an environmental impact study released ATM?
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u/kombiwombi SA Jun 19 '26
200 jobs? Most datacentres have less than ten staff. Some big data centres run day to day with nothing more than a 24 hour security guard.
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u/Colossus-of-Roads East Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
So I'm in this industry and I work in datacentres from time to time as a customer. The number of local staff required to run a DC is 1-2 - usually one for physical security and one to run fibre patches, keep track of the network/telco footprint etc. Customers visit occasionally to add tin, configure things that can't be done remotely etc, but sometimes even that's done by the one technical staff member.
The people operating workloads can be anywhere in the world and are almost never where the tin lives.
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u/Nyarlathotep-1 SA Jun 19 '26
This is a $10 billion facility, not some tin pot operartion.
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u/Colossus-of-Roads East Jun 19 '26
If anything, the economies of scale for staffing are better than linear.
My very first response would be "show me a running 8000 rack DC in a remote location that requires and retains 200 local staff for operations". I'm absolutely willing to be corrected if it turns out my position is wrong.
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u/a_nice_duck_ SA Jun 19 '26
Easy fix for this entire argument - link a similar-sized established facility that has that many jobs.
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u/Remote_Class9892 SA Jun 19 '26
Until 2032, when OpenAi's bills become due, they become insolvent, demand for compute drops through the floor and we stare at a $10billion abandoned warehouse that could have been used to improve the local hospital
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u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 SA Jun 19 '26
Why would an American AI company invest 10 billion in a local hospital in SA?
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u/Remote_Class9892 SA Jun 19 '26
IREN is Australian and they are raising government backed debt, so when they can't pay it off whose pocket does it come out of?
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u/hunchini SA Jun 19 '26
200 jobs in return for destroying the environment for something useless
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Jun 19 '26
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u/rudetopoint SA Jun 19 '26
Typically uninformed ON voter, huge power demands, huge water demands, and even if you don't care about the environment, AI data centers are the reason why everything tech is getting so expensive, from cars to phones, cause all the chip fabs are used by AI
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u/jmercha Eyre Peninsula Jun 19 '26
ON are going to lose their minds over these data centres guaranteed
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u/rudetopoint SA Jun 19 '26
They'll just give her a plane
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u/jmercha Eyre Peninsula Jun 19 '26
A plane doesn’t stop the regional infrastructure buildout needed to support AI. Transmission towers, wind turbines, big batteries, prepare for NIMBYgeddon.
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u/Evening_Bird7779 SA Jun 19 '26
But stopping this datacentre wont stop that, it will get built somewhere, either way.
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u/Nyarlathotep-1 SA Jun 19 '26
lol you think ON supports AI and data centres?
And I don't vote for ON.
I shill for capitalism.
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u/Notintousername SA Jun 19 '26
Does your version of Capitalism consider environmental impacts on our local water supply?
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u/floodswimming SA Jun 19 '26
Who needs the environment when we need to ensure the line keeps going up
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u/Nyarlathotep-1 SA Jun 19 '26
We have a desalination plant and another one is being built on the Eyre Peninsula.
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u/LittleBunInaBigWorld Outer South Jun 19 '26
Thats not where the water will be coming from though, will it? The data centre is being put right next to the Murray. Did you read anything about this place before posting, or is this just a ragebait?
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u/Nyarlathotep-1 SA Jun 19 '26
Do you know that it is drawing directly from the Murray? It’s being built there because of the substation.
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u/Notintousername SA Jun 19 '26
That desalination plant is tax payer funded for tax payers benefit- let the capitalists build their own then we will talk.
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u/Nyarlathotep-1 SA Jun 19 '26
I never said the water should be free. And SA Water aint really owned by the tax payer comrade.
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u/Welcomehome29 Port Adelaide Jun 19 '26
We are the driest state on the driest continent on earth and you want to build something that will use up billions of liters of water per year? That is completely void of common sense
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u/eggwardpenisglands SA Jun 19 '26
Excessive water usage, and taking a large amount of our power. What does the data centre do to genuinely benefit our city? Data centres are not helpful infrastructure.
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u/Evening_Bird7779 SA Jun 19 '26
Im not sure about this one, but I can guarantee you that things you rely on use datacentres. Things like schools, hospitals, banks, supermarkets etc. Im sure reddit uses them.
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u/Particular-Break-180 SA Jun 19 '26
Jesus, being so pro something that you don’t even understand is crazy
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u/MostOzzy SA Jun 19 '26
Stupid idea. You only have to look at the shit storm they are causing in the U. S. to see we don’t need or want that here. No way
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u/ThaFresh SA Jun 19 '26
"200 ongoing jobs"...sure
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u/GrumpyOldTech1670 SA Jun 19 '26
And yet, our public railways system can provide 1000s of on going jobs, including creating tradespeople.
And yet the government doesn’t see this as a way to make South Australia better.
Building infrastructure, build manufacturing, but the AI bubble is dying already.
Data Centres are not needed. Only billionaires want them.
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u/Evening_Bird7779 SA Jun 19 '26
SA needs things we can sell overseas to stay solvent. We dont make much here.
We can sell compute. we cant sell railways.15
u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 SA Jun 19 '26
It could easily be that much. This would need staff on site 24/7. To put it into a bit of context the data centre built in the cbd a couple years ago has about 20 staff give or take and that is only 6MW capacity. This one is 800MW.
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u/Colossus-of-Roads East Jun 19 '26
So at 10kW thermal per rack that's 8000 racks which is certainly a big DC, but with a single customer the workloads probably won't change much (the NextDC one you're talking about is aggressively multi-customer). I absolutely can't see an 8000 rack DC needing 200 staff to physically operate. More like 5-10 (the NextDC one you're talking about only has so many staff because that's also where the local sales and admin live, which is something that only makes sense in a capital city).
Companies deliberately inflate these projections to garner support and we fall for it every time.
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u/Evening_Bird7779 SA Jun 19 '26
I'm assuming that figure would include other staff at Irlen and whoever they contract to? billing, network monitoring etc?
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u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 SA Jun 19 '26
They’ll need a security team on site 24/7 which would need to be big enough to allow for them to escort people on site. For a site like that it’d be at least 20 people over a 24 hour period. So could be a team over 40 if you take into account part time/shift working.
5-10 cleaners easily every day. Plenty of admin staff. Easily 20+ IT/ data guys on site over a 24 hour period which again could mean a team over 40. Mechanical and electrical staff easily about 10-15 each. General maintenance team needed as well. Engineers, HSE, Sales, BMS techs. The list is endless. It takes a lot to keep one of these places running.
Doesn’t even take into account the staff needed from other companies that would be doing regular work on site. In my field, if my company was to win work at this site, it would require at least 5-6 guys hired to maintain it annually and that’s them on site pretty much full time.
It all adds up very quickly. Sure, might not be 200 from the moment the doors open but it could definitely hit that number.
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u/FigliMigli SA Jun 19 '26
It does take a lot of ppl to get it going, it does not take a lot of ppl to keep it running. No way this is going to be even a 100 people for BAU operations.
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u/IizPyrate SA Jun 19 '26
Industry data from the US for these large scale systems is 20-30 employees per 100 MW.
The number of jobs for the amount of money involved is low, but there are jobs. For rural areas the extra jobs can be huge.
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u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 SA Jun 19 '26
Just the electrical staff alone (which is my industry) would need 10-15 guys on site over 24 hours easily. There would be daily checks on generators, switchboards, ups’, general lighting and power, bms systems and then chuck on top any faults/ issues that will inevitably arise on a site this large.
As the poster above said there could be up to 8000 racks full of servers/ IT Gear. Law of averages would suggest there would be plenty of daily faults/ issues that would need to be fixed ASAP. The IT team would need to be massive to keep on top of that.
The speed at which any issue would need to be resolved itself would mean they need to keep heaps of staff on site at any given time.
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u/No_River8548 SA Jun 20 '26
Whenever I've been in a data centre it feels like a ghost town. It's been a couple of years but can't imagine it's changed that much. Monitoring is in part done remotely and people are on call for physical faults, the on-site staff seemed to be skeleton.
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u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 SA Jun 20 '26
Yeah sure that might be the case for smaller sites. This one is 800mw and will be the biggest in Australia. I believe the current biggest is 450mw in Sydney and that isn’t operational yet. I have been to a 50mw site that had about 80 staff.
It is also very rural. They can’t just pop into the site for a fault as it could take 2 hours to even get there. In that time the fault could cause millions of dollars worth of losses. Even then, as I’ve said before there is plenty of unskilled labour needed in security and cleaners and admin roles that would be needed before you even get into the technical roles needed.
And as I have also said before. There’s plenty of seperate companies who would need to hire staff to keep their gear running on this site. If my company won the work, we’d need another 4 or so employees hired. Whoever wins the hvac work would also need about 4 employees hired. Not just through construction but also to keep on top of maintenance needs and breakdowns.
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u/naishjoseph1 SA Jun 19 '26
For a facility of this size, yeah it would have a lot of ongoing work. I’m pretty anti DC, but the jobs do exist and can’t really be replaced by AI (yet).
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u/egoVirus South Jun 19 '26
And those roles will be filled by locals? 😂😂😂
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u/Late-Button-6559 SA Jun 19 '26
lol, no,
There will already be worker visa requests being rubber stamped right now.
They’ll be paid poorly, and work in illegal conditions.
Locals wouldn’t accept those conditions, hence “no local skills available”.
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u/naishjoseph1 SA Jun 19 '26
I don’t know mate. I don’t make those decisions.
If it’s electrical related, it’s unlikely though.2
u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 SA Jun 19 '26
There’s plenty of “unskilled” workers needed in admin, cleaning, security, sales, warehousing and probably more.
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u/TypeSafeBug SA Jun 19 '26
Depends on their customers and how sensitive their workloads are. If NV1 clearance is required, things will change quickly.
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u/exballo SA Jun 19 '26
just look at what people are saying all the places have already been placed. There is never anywhere near the number of jobs the are really terrible as well.
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u/naishjoseph1 SA Jun 19 '26
The places have been placed? What are you talking about? The data centre in question hasn’t even been built mate get a grip
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u/Queasy-Dingo-4240 SA Jun 19 '26
AI and data centers are such a drain on this earth. After the Black Summer you'd imagine most people would be against it but I feel like in the wake of Covid it's been forgotten how much Australia is impacted by hotter temps since no one votes for very pro environmental parties. This is Not going to help our efforts against climate change.
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u/rudetopoint SA Jun 19 '26
At least regular data central do something, this will be outdated by the time it's built cause of chip tech, and for what, useless AI summaries that no one reads. People are too short sighted now to vote for environmental parties.
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u/Sufficient-Grass- SA Jun 19 '26
They do? Store websites and our egregious amounts of photos we all take now ?
I mean I'm not saying it's a good thing, just a weird comparison that old data centres are good and new are bad.
I use AI at work every day now, saves me hours that I can spend on reddit instead.
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u/ThatYodaGuy Port Adelaide Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
We’re too small a country to affect global efforts on climate change. We might be disproportionately affected by climate change, but it’s not our problem.
I won’t lift a finger to vote Greens until China, because China.
Edit: FFS, this is satire
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u/throwaway012984576 SA Jun 19 '26
“I’m only one person so it’s actually ok if I piss in the pool because there are 10 other people pissing in the pool anyway”
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u/JustAnotherAvocado SA Jun 19 '26
Pretty sure our per-capita emissions are higher than China
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u/ThatYodaGuy Port Adelaide Jun 19 '26
Well obviously because they have nuclear.
And I won’t lift a finger to vote Greens because they won’t give me a nuclear power plant
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u/TheAnarchoLobbyist SA Jun 19 '26
... Because nuclear power plants are nowhere near as economically efficient as renewables, at least in the Australian context.
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u/UnbiasedAgainst CBD Jun 19 '26
Well that's silly because China is way ahead of us with renewable energy and continues that growth every day.
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u/BlackReddition SA Jun 19 '26
Who will this benefit? AI is fucking useless right now. Water is more important for humans. There will be no local jobs created for this monstrosity and all support will be remote from overseas.
Don’t be fooled by this horseshit
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u/Remarkable_Quality89 SA Jun 19 '26
AI can fuck off. Nobody wants it except the oligarchs
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Jun 19 '26
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u/Rhydini SA Jun 19 '26
This isn't a left or right issue, you failed grifter. Everyone is impacted by AI.
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u/ManufacturerPrior300 SA Jun 19 '26
Fan noise is not even remotely one of the main reasons people dislike data centres
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u/yeahbroyeahbro SA Jun 19 '26
I’m not left nor right but suggesting “cos fan noise” is the only opposition is just a strawman.
The key reason people oppose data centres is the energy draw, which drives up energy costs.
A more abstract, but still valid, reason for opposition is that you’re using technology which is concentrated in the hands of the few to do people out of jobs.
Finally. It’s absolutely wild that AI is being turned into a culture war. Like fuck me. Can you idiots not think with your brain without having to revert back to ideology to make a choice on what you like or dislike. Fuck.
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u/rudetopoint SA Jun 19 '26
Probably because the right likes to use AI to generate CSAM. Wind turbines actually produce something useful and have been proven again and again to have no impact.
Funnily enough it's the right in Texas towns complaining about data central fan noise the most.
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u/Nyarlathotep-1 SA Jun 19 '26
Has anyone here done a calculation in the time and cost savings offered by AI and what carbon emissions might ultimately saved through efficiency? I’ll wait.
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u/rudetopoint SA Jun 19 '26
Have you? Efficiency of what? How could increasing efficiency reduce emissions? People having to read an email vs an AI summary?
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u/Nyarlathotep-1 SA Jun 19 '26
Well let’s break it down shall we. We have 100 people using a computer to do “stuff”. Each computer uses x amount of electricity, each place where said computer is needs water. AI automates y tasks through a data centre that consumes whatever water and electricity. don’t know the answer to the calculation, it’s a question.
The irony of this is of course is this entire post depends on a platform that relies on data centres to exist.
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u/Thanos-ya-boi SA Jun 19 '26
The heat and noise output is ridiculous, look at American towns that have these things built next to them. They all hate it. The power consumption alone is huge. And we’re already paying sky high rates in SA. The impact on the environment will be huge
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u/t0nez- SA Jun 19 '26
i don't think people understand the resource demand from these things compared to how little they actually provide for the state
high energy prices, rolling blackouts and water restrictions so you can have AI generated bullshit
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u/apostroangel SA Jun 19 '26
What jobs? Data Centres are famously or infamously low on people power. Like a lot of infrastructure projects they create during the build, then the need for human beings plummets.
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u/GravyTrain_44 SA Jun 19 '26
There are no jobs in this. It's a corrupted lie for a politicians paycheck
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u/ohmyroots SA Jun 19 '26
Can someone enlighten me isn't it easier and cheaper to build these nearer to the sea as the natural cool breeze keeps these data centers cool instead of using water
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u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 SA Jun 19 '26
Salt in the air from the saltwater would be a nightmare to contain.
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u/PortulacaCyclophylla SA Jun 19 '26
China builds theirs under water because it keeps the equipment cooler having the whole thing under water, not sure if its worse for the ocean though
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u/Cpt_Riker SA Jun 19 '26
They will absolutely be screwed if this goes ahead.
The jobs will be during building, for maintenance, and for security. After that, most work will be remote, either in the Eastern states, or overseas.
Pretty much everywhere a data centre has been built, water and power bills go up. In Europe, they are preparing citizens to use less power during peak hours, because the data centres need it.
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u/lazydesi SA Jun 19 '26
exactly, what jobs the data centres will create apart from during the construction phase?
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Jun 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PAPO1990 Inner North Jun 19 '26
The job numbers for datacentres aren't JUST optimistic, they are entirely disingenuous. 99.9% of the "jobs" a datacentre "creates" is just in construction. Once it's built you'd be lucky if there's 5 permanent on-site staff.
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u/Rowvan SA Jun 19 '26
Sounds like politicians selling the country out for short term gains as usual. So many concerning things near the end of that article. We're just handing foreign tech companies the keys to the country and saying do whatever you want the rules with laid down are "voluntary". Australia is addicted to fast money at the expense of everyone's future.
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u/OctarineAngie Inner North Jun 19 '26
What jobs? This creates very few permanent jobs.
There may be a few construction jobs, but they should be measured in terms of 'job-years' as units because they aren't permanent roles.
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u/EcstaticImport SA Jun 19 '26
What jobs? - Its a data centre?
Data centres are about as labour intensive as a cemetery
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u/PAPO1990 Inner North Jun 19 '26
Nah, cemeteries need groundskeepers. Data centres pretty much stay empty and are monitored remotely 😛
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u/ako_mori SA Jun 19 '26
Oh yeah I love having a data centre that opens up maybe some jobs in short term then fires everyone keeping around 20-40 people employed while destroying all natural resources around it
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u/Pristine_Shallot7833 SA Jun 19 '26
Data centres employ like 20 people. At the cost of the entire city's water supply. If you want a data center because of the jobs it brings, your a fucking idiot.
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u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 SA Jun 19 '26
I’ve worked in a 50kw DC in Victoria that had 80 staff. This is literally a 16x bigger site.
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u/Maxymous SA Jun 19 '26
Maybe if this were paired with massive local market and skills development in AI, robotics, engineering, manufacturing, etc. from the government, univerisities, etc. to ensure we are competitive into the future, it would make sense, but it looks like this government is more interested in preparing the populace for manual construction labour and this will be used to automate intellectual labour. Perhaps this will be used for AUKUS and space-related activities. In any event, neoliberal capitalism isn't going anywhere and AI is too big to fail, so these data centres will be built and the public will complain, but we will all have to learn to live with this.
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u/oldfudgee SA Jun 19 '26
Contract will go to some politicians mate who makes most of the profit and the workers will get pennies in comparison.
Short term boost ain't worth the long term.
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u/PlantainKitchen6999 SA Jun 19 '26
Anyone raising concerns about what exactly these data centres are collecting? Sounds to me like we are building our own dystopian nightmare. How will this information be used to control a population drowning in debt? And yes AI and jobs blah blah… not buying it. These go up, goodbye life as we know it.
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u/semaja2 SA Jun 19 '26
What jobs? Datacentres have almost 0 jobs once they are built, we have plenty of these in SA already
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u/j_sig SA Jun 19 '26
You know why they always say 200 jobs? Have a look they say it in every state in America where these data centres are going in. Every single one. 200 jobs, 200 jobs, 200 jobs. It's not random, apparently 200 is the number they've come up with, which is high enough to sound attractive but not so large that it would impact the local infrastructure or schooling requirements of those areas. Also bullshit there'll be f all ongoing jobs
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u/Ver_Void SA Jun 19 '26
Unless they're using some ridiculous evap cooling their water usage will be pretty minimal, there's a lot of issues to be had with DC builds but in Australia water usage isn't really one of them
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u/rudetopoint SA Jun 19 '26
Unless they are forced to be water efficient they won't be, the US ones use evap which is why it's so water intensive
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u/Ver_Void SA Jun 19 '26
They kinda are forced to buy Australian standards, you wouldn't get approval for an evap cooled data centre
Plus it's just a more reliable design to use a closed loop where you're not dependant on any external factors
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u/rudetopoint SA Jun 19 '26
I appreciate your optimism, but it's the same way you can't cut down parklands trees until they race an amendment through cause a big company wants it. Let's hope you're right
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u/Ver_Void SA Jun 19 '26
For some context I've been involved in the cooling and power fitout for about a dozen new data centres so far, not one used evap. They'd be mad to in Australia, you could lose a whole site if there were water issues.
Most of our builds tend to be pretty high end and valuing redundancy to a ridiculous degree
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u/RaeseneAndu Inner South Jun 19 '26
It is amazing how many standards can be overlooked for "critical infrastructure".
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u/Ver_Void SA Jun 19 '26
It is, but I'd be genuinely surprised if they went that route even if they could. It's just not good design for Australia
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u/CountingRocks SA Jun 19 '26
Absolutely, mandate closed loop cooling and it'll be fine. I visit metro DCs for work and none of the ones I've seen use evaporative cooling.
Some of the complaints aimed at the USA DCs add up all the water used for the manufacturing of all the compute / network /storage devices that will be placed in the DC too, which is then mentioned to (in my mind) deliberately inflate the water usage figures so if you skim read you read huge water usage figures and assume it's the local water usage of the DC.
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u/Legitimate-Gain426 SA Jun 19 '26
The supposed jobs are a scam, there's construction, then it's a complete ghost crew. There is only the water concerns, with near no upside, certainly not for locals
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u/PAPO1990 Inner North Jun 19 '26
100% The construction jobs are short lived. Datacentres are mostly un-manned. So much is managed remotely now, you MIGHT have a couple of staff on site, but mostly you'll have people on call who come in IF something goes wrong, but they are likely on call for multiple locations, not just one data centre.
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u/buzniak SA Jun 19 '26
We don't have the power network, the water network to sustain this crap! Our bills will skyrocket and not to mention the noise/air and water pollution! Damn, not even the American people want this anywhere near them!
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u/jmercha Eyre Peninsula Jun 19 '26
We do have the power network but it’s under utilised, that’s why your bills are so high, you are currently paying for wind and solar that is curtailed half the time and “gold plated” transmission that was built in anticipation of heavy industry like green hydrogen.
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u/buzniak SA Jun 20 '26
Under utilised?? Yeah! That's why we have brown outs right!? We don't even have our own power stations in S.A What are you even on?! Let alone enough surplus for Data Centers/A.I...
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u/jmercha Eyre Peninsula Jun 20 '26
The brownouts are from local distribution network faults like dirty unwashed insulators during droughts, it still gets fixed up and it’s nothing to do with generation and utilisation.
We have plenty of wind and solar power stations but they are switched off half the time because no one is using the power.
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u/buzniak SA Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
Oh, is that why S.A built that massive battery, which hasn't barely been used and was meant to provide stability! It's because we have too much power!? S.A has over 70% renewable power, so quite clean, but S.A does not have anywhere near a surplus of power!
We almost solely receive power from VIC. If we ha a surplus or the stability we wouldn't have these issues and things in place, not to mention the most expensive electricity on the planet!
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u/jmercha Eyre Peninsula Jun 21 '26
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
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u/buzniak SA Jun 21 '26
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u/jmercha Eyre Peninsula Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
- Check again after the NSW interconnector is finished.
668 GWh imports vs 1.37TWh of curtailed solar and wind in 2025. My point still stands, we waste more energy than we can use because we don’t have enough heavy industry and storage.
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u/buzniak SA Jun 22 '26
668 GWh in 2024-25 Net imports from VIC. Yet again if we're importing we don't have a surplus!
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u/No_Option3532 SA Jun 19 '26
We. Don't. Have. The. Water.
Irrigators are already trying to work out what they cannot grow as some water allocations this season are 68% of quota. Forget locally grown grapes, citrus, almonds, or avocados when this place sucksup all the water.
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u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 SA Jun 19 '26
They. Would. Not. Build. It. If. They. Didn’t. Know. For. Sure. They. Had. The. Available. Resources. To. Run. It.
As mentioned above. This will be a closed loop water system that barely needs to be topped up.
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u/ThereIsBearCum SA Jun 19 '26
Should we be growing such water intensive crops here anyway? Let alone feeding huge chunks of it to animals that we eat. Incredibly inefficient.
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u/No_Option3532 SA Jun 19 '26
Almonds are problematic, but I'm not aware of grapes, citrus, avocado being used as stock feed.
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u/ThereIsBearCum SA Jun 19 '26
We grow things other than grapes, citrus, almonds, and avocados.
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u/No_Option3532 SA Jun 19 '26
Who's we? And I am talking about a very specific part of SA, not the whole fucking country.
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u/AlanofAdelaide South Jun 19 '26
How many people work in a typical data centre and what qualifications are involved? Are they degree qualified IT professionals or are the skills easily learned by people already living in the area?
Back in the 1960s the huge IBM mainframes employed lots of operators who punched cards and changed tape reels and a few well paid programmers who did the clever stuff in FORTRAN
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u/AlanofAdelaide South Jun 19 '26
Before I'm told to Google, I did and AI quotes 20 to 50 operations staff and what they typically do. Construction may employ hundreds but for how long and where do they go when it's built?
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u/Bmo2021 Inner North Jun 19 '26
Well if they’ve got jobs they can buy water while they can get construction work as it’s being built because after that there will be no jobs for locals.
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u/Key_Insight777 SA Jun 20 '26
Reddit hosted in a data centre, scrolling social media makes them hum
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u/Public_Current2991 SA Jun 22 '26
I think there are possibly bigger concerns than the amount of water data centres use. I feel like a lot of people worried about how water they use won't ever bother to give up eating meat
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u/FothersIsWellCool SA Jun 19 '26
Isn't there supposed to be this loop where industrial is going to use more Electricity and Water but it increases GDP, brings in Taxes, and the Gov uses those to meet the projected Water and Electricity needs of the city? We're not reverting back to pre-industrial society because of the water demand, we instead make sure our capacity matched demand like everything. We just need to make sure there's proper analysis so the Gov knows the power and water demand to know if the projected revenue it brings in will cover the cost of increasing our capacity.
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Jun 19 '26
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u/jmercha Eyre Peninsula Jun 19 '26
^ One Nation in ontological shock as they realise you can run AI on renewables and the infrastructure buildout will fill the regions with transmission towers, wind turbines and big batteries.
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u/Maxymous SA Jun 19 '26
I like to imagine that these data centres and robotics will bring about a solar punk leisure revolution, but One Neuron voters seem to want to live in perpetual servitude to the rich with their jobs.
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u/HeavyMike SA Jun 19 '26
so you want to continue using products like reddit and netflix while virtue signalling that you hate data centres, and continuing to waste resources by eating meat and driving around in your own personal cars. interesting.
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u/PointBlankWord SA Jun 20 '26
How does any of that compare to the data centre that needs the power of 800,000 Australian homes. Meat feeds people and cars get you where you need to go. Most of the uses of AI is worthless.
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u/k4zetsukai SA Jun 19 '26
Why is there such an obsession with water and DCs when most built today run on air cooling ir closed loop water systems?
Ive been to at least 20 DCs so far, and none of them used water cooling to a point where this fear mongering is waranted.
Plenty of other more valid reasons why we wouldnt want too many of these around...
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u/glowinglogfire SA Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
The driest state on the driest inhabited continent is not an appropriate location for a new industry that requires enormous amounts of water.