Civic project · San Antonio
Compute lives somewhere.
A plain-English guide to data centers in San Antonio.What a data center actually is, what it uses, what the city gets back, and how to think about the one being proposed near you. Walk through a 3D campus, build your own, and check the evidence before you decide.
What is inside
The whole campus, opened up.
- A guided 3D walkthrough of a data center campus
- A full digital twin: change the size, the cooling, the water, and the power, and watch the numbers rewrite
- Water, electricity, noise, jobs, and land explained without jargon
- A San Antonio case study, a benefit ledger, and a disclosure card for any project
- Digital twin
- 3DDigital twin
- MW scenarios
- 5–500MW scenarios
- Explainer pages
- 38Explainer pages
- Free for every citizen
- $0Free for every citizen
Three ways in
Don’t just read about a data center. Walk through one.
Most people have never been inside a data center, and most of the debate happens in acronyms. This site is built for the neighbor, the council member, and the reporter who wants the real picture in five minutes.
Walk through
See one in 3D
A guided tour of a real campus: the halls, the cooling, the substation, and the neighborhood next door.
Start the tour →Full builder
Build the one San Antonio should want
Pick the size, the cooling, the water source, and the power plan. The campus, the gallons per day, and the megawatts rewrite themselves as you go.
Open the builder →The case study
What it means for San Antonio
CPS Energy, SAWS, the Edwards Aquifer, local projects, and the benefit ledger. Evidence and open questions, clearly separated.
Read the case study →
The questions people walk in with
Four questions, answered in numbers you can check.
- Does it drink our water?
- Depends entirely on the cooling design. The site shows the difference between towers, dry coolers, and liquid cooling in gallons per day.
- Will my electric bill go up?
- The grid math, who pays for new transmission, and what a fair deal looks like, in plain language.
- How many jobs, really?
- Construction versus permanent, and how the numbers in a press release compare with what the building actually needs.
- Is this one a good deal?
- A disclosure card and a benefit ledger you can run on any proposed project before the council vote.
Decision-support, not advocacy
An independent civic project from The AI Cowboys.
Compute Lives Somewhere is not a design, a permit, a rate case, or a recommendation. Sources and uncertainties are disclosed on every page.
Field notes
AI and data intelligence,
from San Antonio.
Monthly notes on applied AI, synthetic and real-world data, and neuromorphic and physical AI, written for the people actually deploying them. No pitches.