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Equation 3 · Comparing the Main Approaches to AI Datacenter Power and Cooling

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EITE_{\mathrm{IT}}

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the electricity delivered to IT equipment, giving WUE units of litres per kilowatt-hour rather than PUE’s dimensionless ratio [ 4 ]. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.

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EITE_{\mathrm{IT}}

Symbol E_IT

the electricity delivered to IT equipment, giving WUE units of litres per kilowatt-hour rather than PUE’s dimensionless ratio [ 4 ].

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subscript

subscript

The lower label selects a particular version, component, or indexed member of the quantity. For example, x₀ and xₜ can be values at different positions.

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where VwaterV_{\mathrm{water}} is total on-site water consumption in litres and EITE_{\mathrm{IT}} is the electricity delivered to IT equipment, giving WUE units of litres per kilowatt-hour rather than PUE’s dimensionless ratio [ 4 ] . What LBNL’s simulations across roughly 965 US weather stations and multiple facility archetypes show is that this number is driven overwhelmingly by which heat-rejection route a facility uses at the plant level — an economizer decision layered on top of, and largely independent from, the cooling method at the rack. Facilities running “water-cooled chiller systems without economizers exhibit the highest WUE, largely attributed to substantial cooling tower water usage,”…
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where VwaterV_{\mathrm{water}} is total on-site water consumption in litres and EITE_{\mathrm{IT}} is the electricity delivered to IT equipment, giving WUE units of litres per kilowatt-hour rather than PUE’s dimensionless ratio [ 4 ] . What LBNL’s simulations across roughly 965 US weather stations and multiple facility archetypes show is that this number is driven overwhelmingly by which heat-rejection route a facility uses at the plant level — an economizer decision layered on top of, and largely independent from, the cooling method at the rack. Facilities running “water-cooled chiller systems without economizers exhibit the highest WUE, largely attributed to substantial cooling tower water usage,” and this pattern holds for both air-cooled and liquid-cooled IT equipment alike when both sit behind a waterside economizer [ 4 ] . Conversely, facilities using airside economizers “allow for the shutdown of chilled water systems during favorable weather conditions, resulting in substantial water conservation,” regardless of whether the racks behind them are air- or liquid-cooled [ 4 ] .

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