An Equinix facility in the Silicon Valley will become one of the few data centers in the region that use recycled water for cooling. Recycled water is not commonplace in the data center industry because although the water itself is cheaper than potable water, the belief is that there is usually an added cost to treating it.

Jerry Collier, senior director for IBX operations for the Northwest region at Equinix, said the company’s LEED-certified SV2 data center in Santa Clara, California, would be cooled by recycled water in about one month from now. He did not expect the treatment process to be more expensive than normal because the water will come to the facility extensively pre-treated.

"It’s going to [cost] less because [of] the type of water we get … in that particular site," he said. The quality of recycled water will be higher than normal because of a new and advanced water-treatment plant launched recently by the City of San Jose, which provides recycled water in Santa Clara, he explained.

Equinix will pay less for the water itself but, as of Wednesday, Collier did not have the exact future rate. "The water delivered to us will be at a cheaper rate" than the rate the company pays for potable water, he said.

Besides the treatment expense, another argument against using recycled water in data centers was the cost of retrofitting the infrastructure to use it. The retrofit project at the Santa Clara data center site cost between $16,000 and $17,000 for a facility that provides 80,000 sq ft of colocation space.

"It’s very minimal," he said about cost of the new piping system that delivers recycled water from the back-flow preventer to the facility’s cooling tower.

The project to use recycled water at the data center started about two years ago. During that time, the city’s recycled water division built pipes to deliver the water to the site.

Equinix also had to send several staff members to a class to learn how to prevent recycled water from contaminating potable water used at the facility.

At least one other data center in Santa Clara uses recycled water. Bay Area Internet Solutions’ colocation facility has an on-site water-treatment system that does not use the typical chemical processes to condition the water.

The system at BAIS is made by Dolphin WaterCare, a subsidiary of Clearwater Systems.

Collier said Equinix had no plans at the moment to use recycled water at any other Silicon Valley facilities. "It doesn’t mean we won’t look at it later on."