- Zero-water evaporation system will virtually eliminate water consumption across Microsoft-owned data centers
- This saves tens of thousands of billion liters of water during the Microsoft Parc of data centers
- The key to delivering this solution was to implement chip level — cooling solutions in scale
Microsoft has introduced a new data center design that eliminates the need for water evaporation when cooling, which addresses concern for water consumption in regions facing deficiency and drought.
This new cooling system, launched in August 2024, optimizes AI workloads while retaining water and forming part of Microsoft’s data center society lift, helps support communities and reduce environmental impact.
The system works by using fluid cooling at the chip level, which provides precise temperature control without relying on water evaporation. While water is still used for administrative needs such as toilets and kitchens, the cooling system itself does not require fresh water.
Pilot sites will be live next year
The system works on a closed loop, which means that the water is circulated continuously between servers and coolers without having to be replenished. Closed loop cooling has been used by over-clocking (including me) for years to keep temperatures stable under resource workloads, making it a natural fit for modern data centers with their intensive AI requirements.
Water efficiency in data centers is measured by means of water consumption efficiency (WUE), which calculates water consumption in relation to energy consumption. Microsoft says that by moving to closed Loop Liquid Cooling it expects to save over 125 million liters of water per day. Year per year. Data Center.
“We have been working since the early 2000s to reduce water consumption and improved our WUE by 80% since our first generation of data centers,” said Steve Solomon, Vice President, Data Center Infrastructure Engineering, Microsoft.
“As the water challenges become more extreme, we know that we have more work to do. The switch to the next generation data centers is expected to help reduce our WUE to almost zero for each data center using zero-water evaporation. As our fleet expands over time, this shift will help reduce Microsoft’s fleetwide Wue even longer. “
New data centers in Phoenix, Arizona and Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, will serve as pilot sites for this technology in 2026. All future Microsoft data centers will use this cooling access in the future, with the first places expected to be operational in 2027.
Removal of evaporation cooling increases the effectiveness of power consumption (PUE) as mechanical cooling requires more energy. However, the use of high -efficiency financial refrigeration machines and elevated cooling temperatures will offset some of this requirement.
