PHOENIX — Just in case there wasn’t enough to worry about during this data center boom, here’s something else to add to the list.
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An Arizona State University researcher says local “heat waste” emitted by data centers can drive up AC bills for nearby homes and businesses.
During a sit-down interview with 12News, David Sailor of ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning said excess heat emitted by powerful air conditioning units on data centers may increase AC costs for local property owners as much as “several percentage points” in a given month.
“With one or two degrees Fahrenheit increase in air temperature, you’d expect a several percent increase in your utility bill, and so for an individual home that may be on the order of 10’s of dollars (per month),” Sailor said.
Sailor recently joined the Power & Influence podcast to discuss why his team is now conducting more precise research on the interaction between air conditioning units, utility costs, and heat emitted by nearby data centers.
“We’re gathering all the data around these data centers really to help train and validate our own models,” said Sailor, an engineer who has studied anthropogenic heat for decades.
“We can simultaneously model the outdoor thermal environment and the building energy consumption of the individual homes that are in that neighborhood. In our model, we can very easily turn off the waste heat emissions and turn it back on and see what the difference is in terms of the utility bill.”
Sailor’s study about data center heat waste, published in the ASME Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities, claims heat emissions can travel as far as five football fields. The study showed that wind dictates where heat travels. Factors that mitigate the impact of heat waste include the design of data center roofs, nearby green belts and parks, and water features.
Saylor said scientists have known for decades that anthropogenic heat waste can warm neighborhoods. But the sources of that heat are typically small compared to data centers. Saylor says the impact of ambient air temperature on utility bills is also well-documented.
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“For example, if the entire city air temperature were raised by one degree Fahrenheit throughout the summer months, that would lead to tens of millions of dollars of increased air conditioning bills per year with all the homes in Phoenix,” Sailor said.
Sailor said utilities and data center companies are showing interest in the research, collaborating with him to discuss mitigation. He added that some data center companies already have features in place to reduce the impact.
Follow ongoing Power & Influence coverage with 12News Journalist Joe Dana for the latest news and investigations on energy, the environment, and the data center boom. Tips? Contact Joe Dana at [email protected].
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