2024 is the year that Malaysia will see the opening of many data centers in our country, with 27 in Selangor and 54 in Johor alone. This is seen as very good for the country's economic recovery, but not everything is as simple and beautiful as that.
The National Water Services Commission (SPAN) recently issued a statement saying that they hope that the government will mandate the use of alternative water sources for use by existing data centers, as well as for data centers that will be established in Malaysia.
As we all know, data centers that process information every day and at all times use a lot of electricity and water supply to power them and also cool the server components.
Charles Santiago, chairman of SPAN, said that they hope that the Malaysian government will mandate the use of alternative water sources as a way to cool these data centers, because the use of existing water supplies treated by these states will not be able to meet the demand of these companies in a few years.
He said that the search for alternative water sources such as rainwater harvesting should be applied in the process of developing new data centers in Malaysia so that it does not cause issues to the water resources that should be used by the people every day.
What is also worrying is that if water rationing is forced due to the drought, these data centers will also face difficulties in operating because they have to rely on the treated water supply by the state government.
In Johor alone, existing data centers are seen to require 440 million liters of water per day to operate until 2035. In Selangor, the demand is seen at a rate of 79 million liters per day until 2032, and this figure is expected to increase due to the increase in the number of data centers that will operate in the state.
SPAN also proposed several long-term measures to ensure sufficient water supply not only for the people, but for these data centers to operate:
Use of reclaimed water: Using reclaimed water, such as treated effluent from sewage treatment plants for cooling purposes
Efficient cooling technology: Using more efficient cooling technology to reduce water consumption in the cooling process
Rainwater harvesting system: Using rainwater harvesting systems in data center operations. The collected rainwater can be used for various purposes such as cooling.
Recirculation water use: Singapore uses a Cycles of Concentration system that recycles water used to cool data centers to reduce the use of new treated water to cool data centers.
SPAN said that they are studying all aspects and are developing mechanisms and regulations related to using treated water to cool data centers, and will share them when they are finalized.