Well, well, well. This is quite a stat. I stumbled upon it in a discussion area and had a hard time believing it’s true. But it is.
More water is used cleaning dust off of commercial solar farm arrays than is used by ALL data centers in Texas!
From an article in Tech Briefs:
Cleaning solar panels uses way more water than you might think – unless you were right on the money thinking 10 billion gallons of water per year.
That amount of water is almost unbelievable, says Professor of Mechanical Engineering Kripa Varanasi, who, along with graduate student Sreedath Panath and a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wants to create a water-free way to clear dust off of photovoltaic panels.
“The water footprint of the solar industry is mind boggling,” said Varanasi in a recent MIT news release , and it will be increasing as these installations continue to expand worldwide. “So, the industry has to be very careful and thoughtful about how to make this a sustainable solution.”
Of course, estimates vary wildly – some are as high as 338 billion gallons, which is many multiples of the 10 billion gallons used in data centers every year.
[REMINDER – data centers currently use only 0.4% of all water in Texas]
One of Clayton’s many Big Lies is that data centers are going to “steal” all of our water and it will all just disappear. Then we all die of thirst. He has thousands of stupid old ladies believing this nonsense.
But when it comes to the 500,000 acres of solar panels (800 square miles!) scarring the Texas land, he doesn’t say a peep.
Yes, you read that correctly. Currently there are almost 800 square miles of ugly-ass solar panels ruining the beautiful Texas countryside and destroying farmland. Data centers? Only 10,000 acres – or only 15 square miles.
Look at a map of Texas and find little tiny Sunnyvale Texas. THAT is about 16 square miles – every data center in Texas would fit into that one tiny town. That represents about .005585% of all the land in Texas.
(In other words, 99.9944% of Texas is NOT covered by data centers and 99.6% of the water used in Texas is NOT used for data centers. Sure sounds like a huge nothingburger when you put it in proper context, right? But nobody ever accused Comrade Clayton the Poli Sci major of understanding ratios or percentages.)
It takes a hell of a lot of water to keep the dust, pollen and other assorted shit off of EIGHT HUNDRED SQUARE MILES of solar panels. Scumbag commie Clayton Tucker ignores that altogether.
Clayton has been a HUGE fan of solar panels for 15 years now, despite that fact, NOBODY in his family has bothered to install a single watt of solar panels on their own roofs or yards. Clayton lives with his parents, so he’d need permission (and money) to do so. But Clayton has no money for solar panels and no roof to put them on, so he’s talking out his asshole, as usual.
What do you expect from dishonest and insane assholes who post and BELIEVE horseshit like this:
All hat, no cattle and no penis. A moron candidate for moron voters. That’s our Clayton!