When people think about data centers, they usually think about servers, GPUs, electricity, and AI.
Very few people think about water.
That realization is what led me to start building AquaStat.
Modern data centers consume significant amounts of water for cooling. Depending on the technology, climate, and workload, water usage can vary dramatically from one facility to another.
Finding reliable information about that usage, however, is often difficult.
Some facilities voluntarily publish sustainability reports. Others release only limited information. In many cases, information is scattered across government documents, environmental reports, local news articles, permits, or community discussions.
I wanted to build a platform that could organize this information into something developers, researchers, journalists, and the public could actually use.
AquaStat is an API-first platform focused on collecting, organizing, and analyzing information related to data center water usage.
The long-term vision includes: Rather than hiding calculations, I want AquaStat to explain where information comes from and how conclusions are reached whenever possible.
I'm designing AquaStat around several principles:
Everything should be accessible through documented APIs before being exposed through a graphical interface.
Documentation should be treated as part of the product, not an afterthought.
Whenever AquaStat estimates or derives values, the methodology should be understandable and repeatable.
The project uses a modern TypeScript stack with an emphasis on maintainability, testing, and developer experience.
One of the biggest technical challenges isn't writing the API itself.
It's data quality.
Public information comes from many different sources: Those sources often disagree with each other.
One of the goals of AquaStat is to preserve source attribution instead of pretending every number is perfectly known.
When information cannot be verified, it should be identified as uncertain rather than presented as fact.
This project has already pushed me to learn more about:
It's also reinforced how important good documentation and clear system design are when projects begin to grow.
The roadmap currently focuses on:
AquaStat is still evolving and actively being worked on, but I'm excited to continue building it in public.
I'll be writing more about the architecture, technical decisions, lessons learned, and challenges along the way.
If you're interested in APIs, developer tooling, environmental technology, or open-source software, I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas.