Can Data Center Become Water Self-Sufficient?∗

To curtail data centers ’ huge cooling power consump-tion and water demand (for cooling), air-side economizer has been increasingly adopted to cool down servers. Recently, another sustainability practice, rainwater har-vesting, has also seen a growing adoption in data cen-ters, potentially leading to water self-sufficiency with-out connecting to water utilities to supply cooling wa-ter. Nonetheless, various factors, e.g., unpredictable rain falls and limitations on water harvesting area, make wa-ter self-sufficiency challenging. In this paper, we present a first-of-its-kind study to evaluate whether it is feasi-ble to achieve water self-sufficiency in data centers. We find that although water self-sufficiency depends on non-controllable factors such as weather; improving power proportionality (via power management) and increasing water tank size will increase the feasibility, relieving the requirement on water harvesting area and making water self-sufficiency a reality in different locations.