Layer 1 · The numbers that decide
WUE — water usage effectiveness
Litres of water per kilowatt-hour of IT load. The number local communities and regulators increasingly care about more than PUE.
The number
- What it is
- Litres of water per kilowatt-hour of IT load. The number local communities and regulators increasingly care about more than PUE.
- Typical values
- Highly site-dependent; evaporative designs are the outliers
Verified 2026-09-09.
The catch
Optimising PUE by evaporating water moves the cost onto a resource you may lose access to. Several siting fights in 2025-2026 turned on water, not electricity.
What this is powering
A GB200 NVL72 rack draws 120–132 kW and a GB300 pushes 135–200 kW, against a 2026 average rack of about 27 kW. The silicon decision and the power decision are the same decision, made eighteen months apart.
Layer 2 — Silicon · GB200 NVL72 · The 150 W inference option
Others in the numbers that decide
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