Telangana Plans To Supply Grey Water To Data Centres

The government is pitching Telangana as an ideal destination for data centres, and data centres having an aggregated capacity of around 800 megawatts are in various stages of completion in Hyderabad. However, data centres are some of the thirstiest of all businesses, with each megawatt capacity of theirs requiring around 15 million litres of water a year.

An estimated 210 crore litres could be required every year to keep the existing and upcoming data centres in and around Hyderabad cool. The capacities of data centres are measured in megawatts, the power they consume, and the heat generated from the centres matches the energy consumed, and this is where the requirement for huge amounts of water to keep the systems cool comes from.

Faced with the challenge of not just attracting data centre business to the state – Telangana is among the hot emerging hubs for this business in India – but also keep them going, the state government is learnt to be working on a plan to make use of the large amount of ‘grey water’ — water released from sewage treatment plants — to supply to the data centres for their cooling.

A senior government official said that next week, a meeting of senior officials from various departments and representatives of data centre companies is expected, where a serious exercise to assess the current and future water requirements will be assessed.

“Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, before leaving for Davos, instructed that a basic plan be prepared and kept ready by the time he returns from his trip abroad. The current idea is to make use of part of the 1,100 million litres of grey water that the city generates every day to supply to the data centres.

“This will do two things — one it addresses the water needs of data centres, and two, it also cuts down the amount of grey water that is now released into the Musi every day. In fact, the Chief Minister has already suggested that the possibility of setting up a ring main pipeline connecting all the sewage treatment plants with two holding tanks from where the grey water can be pumped to the data centres be examined,” the official said.

With the government moving ahead with plans for rejuvenating the Musi River by cleaning it up, and using water from Godavari to give the river a new life, along with several other measures, diverting the grey water away from the river is expected to assist the river clean-up plans further.

“However, this will require creating new infrastructure in terms of pipelines, pumping stations to take the water to the areas where data centres are expected to come up, including the Bharat Future city. Since the laws prohibit the use of freshwater, or water drawn from sources used to supply water for drinking, using grey water is the best option and the government of India funds can be tapped up to 25 per cent of the infrastructure costs, while the industries will have to bear 50 per cent, and the state will bear the rest. This will likely be a win-win for all,” the official said.