As Atlantans continue to ponder their dwindling supply of water, the AJC is attempting to educate readers about the link between water and electricity:
Electric utilities are the single largest users of the region’s freshwater. A family of four can use three times more water to power their home than they use to drink, bathe and water their lawn.[...]
The average Georgia household burns 1,100 kilowatt hours of electricity a month. That translates to about 27,000 gallons of water.
By comparison, a family of four goes through about 9,000 gallons a month for household uses such as washing clothes, flushing toilets and showering.
The article, for understandable reasons, focuses on the types of power plants that are common in the Atlanta metro area, and so your mileage may vary when it comes to electricity generation in general.
At least for those types of plants, the water consumption comes from the evaporation of water/steam used to drive power plant turbines.
Recently it’s become trendy to promote switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs, in the name of reducing CO2 emissions via reduced power consumption. Perhaps in the southeast, they ought to revise that message to changing to CFL’s (or better yet, turning out lights, etc.) to conserve water.