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Power Businesses Google The Internet Technology

Google's Addiction to Cheap Electricity 254

Posted by Zonk from the in-what-other-ways-is-google-like-bender dept.
Googling Yourself writes "Harpers magazine has published a blueprint of Google's new data center at The Dalles, Oregon where they will be tapping into some of the cheapest electricity in North America. Although the plans show three 68,680-square-foot storage buildings, only two of the buildings have been constructed so far. Based on a projected industry standard of 500 watts per square foot, the Dalles plant can be expected to use 103 megawatts of electricity. Google's server farm represents a new phase in the transformation of the Columbia River over the past half-century. Across the street from the Google data center is an example the last generation of high energy consumers; Microsoft, Yahoo, and Ask.com are also planning data centers on the Columbia River."
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Google's Addiction to Cheap Electricity More

Google's Addiction to Cheap Electricity

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  • Wind power? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Shuntros ( 1059306 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @06:07PM (#22448558)
    Why don't they build it in DC? The amount of political hot-air around these days would surely be sufficient to power a substantial wind farm.

  • Power and Cooling - the top DataCenter expenses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by colinmcnamara ( 1152427 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @06:12PM (#22448592) Homepage

    Of course companies that have large compute clusters are migrating to areas that offer steady low cost power and cooling. It is simple business. Power and Cooling account for the majority of the expense of running a DataCenter. The draw is a lot of extremely cheap electricity combined with cold outside air (allowing bypass cooling) is something that is to important to pass up if you have thousands of servers.

    One other thing to keep in mind is that in many places the power infrastructure is strained to its limit. For example I heard that to get 1 megawatt of power in downtown San Francisco it will take upwards of Three years for PG&E to deliver. Putting DataCenters in locations that aren't constrained is just good business sense.

    • Re:Power and Cooling - the top DataCenter expenses (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @07:24PM (#22449056)
      To get some ideas of where the cheapest electricity is look for the locations of aluminium smelters. Aluminium is almost vast amounts of solidified electricity, which is why we started recycling the stuff years before anything else - orders of magnitude in energy usage less to melt than to make from the oxide.

      Google's idea to put a lot of solar panels on the roof makes a lot of sense in purely practical terms if you think of it as a great big UPS. Peak times are going to be in daylight so an outage at night is not as big of a problem (in kW anyway).

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by VagaStorm ( 691999 )
        dude, google is kind of an around the clock operation :p

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by YayaY ( 837729 )
        I wonder why don't they put those datacenter in the south of Canada. Electricity is cheap there (there are a lot of aluminium smelters) and Internet connectivity is pretty good too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by arminw ( 717974 )
        .....Peak times are going to be in daylight......

        Most computers power consumption doesn't vary dramatically, depending on processing loads. The daily load curve is likely much flatter for such a data center than the grid as a whole.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by johnpaul191 ( 240105 )
          I *think* they meant that cooling will drawing more energy in the daytime, at least in a place when daytime temps are a good bit higher. the servers themselves, and general building uses, will be fairly even 24/7.

          then again why not go even farther north and just open some windows? offsetting the air conditioning costs has to be appealing to the suits. maybe deep underground where the temperature is pretty even. a little geothermal technology has to help.

    • Re:Power and Cooling - the top DataCenter expenses (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arminw ( 717974 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @08:38PM (#22449476)
      ....to get 1 megawatt of power in downtown San Francisco it will take upwards of Three years for PG&E to deliver.....

      It's a lot cheaper to ship bits than to ship the power to run a large server farm. Environmentalists and the NIMBY folks are also much less likely to complain about a little trench that is soon forgotten after the lines are buried. A 500KV power line raises a lot more opposition. The sites the old aluminum plants used to be already have the requisite power connections.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by drooling-dog ( 189103 )

      The draw is a lot of extremely cheap electricity combined with cold outside air
      It's a shame that the Buffalo/Niagara area is missing out on this, then. Lots of hydroelectric, plenty of cold air. They could use the business...
  • Their own search engine has popularized Richard C. Duncan's Olduvai Theory (.pdf) [thesocialcontract.com] which now has empirical support [fcnp.com].

  • For Profit Company is Cost Conscious (Score:4, Funny)

    by Protonk ( 599901 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @06:15PM (#22448624) Homepage
    News at 11.

    • Re:For Profit Company is Cost Conscious (Score:5, Informative)

      by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Saturday February 16, 2008 @06:56PM (#22448882) Homepage
      Well, yes, and it's a strange point of view to say that a company is "addicted" to one of its inputs. One may as well say that Google is addicted to CPUS, or to buildings, or to fiber optic cables, or to people.

    • Thats' not the point. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nuckfuts ( 690967 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @07:08PM (#22448962)
      It disappoints me that a three-word smartass comment gets modded up, even when it misses the point.

      TFA addresses much larger issues than shopping for cheap electricity. It's about how the Internet companies require vastly more energy to run than most people realize, and how taxpayers are footing the bill for a lot of it.

      • Thousands of servers require lots of electricity. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by The tECHIDNA ( 677584 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @07:42PM (#22449164) Homepage
        Also at 11.

        And before I get modded down: how exactly is Google supposed to get the power to run not just the servers, but the cooling, network switches, and other hardware that will keep it from the equivalent of being Slashdotted?
        Considering that Google is one of the top sites on the Internet, I frankly have no problem with this, considering there aren't any viable solutions to produce power of that magnitude (though it'll be interesting if Google eventually just builds its own power plant -- GoogleVolts FTW!); and after all, they've got shareholders to look after...gotta keep the company profitable. Google (and the other companies on that will be on that river) will probably donate some of its funds to carbon offsets to shut everybody up and get good PR at the same time.

        and how taxpayers are footing the bill for a lot of it.
        This taxpayer says "better the funds go to Google (or other companies) rather than to a pointless war."
        But I don't live in the town in question, so what I say is moot. But don't complain to Google...complain to the city for pimping themselves out to get the corps to build there. We've been down this road hundreds of times across the country with Wal-Mart.

        And as an aside, I'm a little loath to quote that Harper's article as gospel considering that the server count in the article went from "1,000s" to "a thousand times more?! With no source?! I have to call shenanigans on that hand-waving, sorry.

        (Full disclosure: I have a GMail account. But I would say the above if this was say, Wikipedia that's using that power.)
        • Mainframes, for example? Google's current deployment architecture is simply very energy- (and space-) intensive. Different servers are optimized for different types of computing, and Google does a lot of what mainframes do best. Maybe Google will figure that out before trashing the environment any more.

          • Re:They Could Buy Different Servers (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @09:17PM (#22449674)

            Google does a lot of what mainframes do best

            Not really. Mainframes do batch processing of predetermined non-interactive workloads best. Google does interactive database searches with a fraction of a second latency, serves up web ads, and is trying to host traditional desktop applications via a web browser.

            Mainframes have really puny CPU horsepower relative to their size, cost and power consumption. Their OSes are tuned for batch processing. Almost every compromise in mainframe design is decided in favor of uptime and transactional integrity, things for which Google has almost no use at all. They would be throwing a lot of money at solving issues they don't have if they ran mainframes, and even if they did manage to buy enough mainframes to handle their particular workload, it would probably end up using more power than they're using now.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 )

        It disappoints me that a three-word smartass comment gets modded up, even when it misses the point.

        TFA addresses much larger issues than shopping for cheap electricity. It's about how the Internet companies require vastly more energy to run than most people realize, and how taxpayers are footing the bill for a lot of it.

        Sadly, that "three-word smartass comment" is right.
        Go look into the politics behind any major construction project & you'll see tax breaks & special treatment.
        The exact same thing is going on in Washington State [nwsource.com]

        Or just ask your local sports nut about the tax breaks that go into building sports stadiums.
        Taxpayers footing part of the bill is business as usual.

        • Tax Breaks (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mosb1000 ( 710161 )
          This line of reasoning always confuses me. How is giving someone a tax break the same as giving them a subsidy? You imply that businesses in some way pay taxes. I know the tax rate on corporate profits is 35% in most places, but the reality is that these costs are simply passed on to consumers. It's the consumers who really pay the tax.

          We should outlaw corporate taxes entirely, since all they do is hide the tax from the people who really pay it.

          • Re:Tax Breaks (Score:4, Informative)

            by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Sunday February 17, 2008 @12:03AM (#22450474) Journal

            This line of reasoning always confuses me. How is giving someone a tax break the same as giving them a subsidy?
            This isn't a difficult concept. Subsidies are not only cash.
            Subsidies are any form of government granted (financial) benefit.

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy#Tax_Subsidy [wikipedia.org]
            Feel free to read about the other types of subsidies.

            In this case, [company] gets to use the full range of government services without paying the same taxes like everyone else.

            In TFA I linked, Yahoo and Microsoft are threatening to build their datacenters somewhere else unless they get (amongst other things) a specific exemption from the 6.5% sales tax on their purchases for the datacenters, because "the [Washington] state Department of Revenue recently determined that the server farms aren't eligible for an existing tax exemption for rural manufacturers".
      • Is as hypocritical as they come... They locate in Oregon touting "clean" energy provided by hydroelectric power - never mind the salmon kills.

        Nonetheless... can you imagine the uproar among their fan base if they would have relocated to the Ohio Valley where cheap - coal fired electricity exists and a region that desperately needs the jobs.

        • Re:Google Environmental Conscience (Score:5, Insightful)

          by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @10:29PM (#22449970)

          never mind the salmon kills.
          But the dam was built in '57! It's not like they are building a dam for Google, or even keeping one open longer because of Google. The salmon impact is completely independent of whether or not Google moves in. On the other hand, locating in Ohio and using 80+ MW would burn enough coal to provide 80+ MW... it's one-to-one.

          I don't think that they deserve much heat over this.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by arminw ( 717974 )
          .....They locate in Oregon touting "clean" energy provided by hydroelectric power - never mind the salmon kills.......

          I hope you are not one of the fools that advocates the removal of dams, just to save a few fish. The hydro dams on the Columbia do not emit carbon or other pollutants. The electricity that Google will be using is largely unused, because it is no longer used to make aluminum. Every watt not generated by dams will be produced by other, more eco-unfriendly means. In todays political climate, th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tomhath ( 637240 )
        Seems like a reasonable use of tax dollars to me. Their options were either build in the US (if power at competitive prices could be assured) or go offshore.

        It's also interesting that Google is looking at building a data center in Lithuania, where 78% of the power comes from nuclear power plants. Maybe if the US had more power available from less expensive (non-fossil fuel) sources, the aluminum smelting plants that had been using the power at the Oregon site would still be employing thousands of American w

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by nospam007 ( 722110 )

          It's also interesting that Google is looking at building a data center in Lithuania, where 78% of the power comes from nuclear power plants. Maybe if the US had more power available from less expensive (non-fossil fuel) sources, ...

          BTW NYT has an article about nuclear waste costs that rely on the taxpayer pocket.
            http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/us/17nuke.html [nytimes.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Protonk ( 599901 )
        I'm that smartass. Most new capital investments by companies are at least partially taxpayer subsidized. If you'll recall, Fairfax county (in northern VA, one of the internet bubble loci) offer LARGE property tax offsets for new companies that would lease office space in buildings on the assumption that future tax revenue would offset the present loss. OOPS.

        My point is that GIVEN those tax incentives, we generate seemingly nonsensical outcomes. The same is true of any economic problem. Even the inte
  • americans seem to have.
    While visiting the hoover dam, there also was talk about "cheap electricity" for people in the vincinity.
    isnt it uneconomical to sell it cheap if its more worth somewhere else?
    With 320 kV lines, you could transmit electricity across the united states with losing 20%, at most. And to reach states with much higher electricity prices, you could stay within single digit percentages of loss.
    So why sell it for cheap? its not like the capacities are unlimited...
    • Nobody wants the high voltage lines in their backyard. High voltage lines cause cancer, you know. They're currently fighting NYRI, which is trying to bring upstate power down to New York City.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbIII ( 701233 )
        Of course they cause cancer but the answer is not to spend ten hours a day over a span of years within a couple of metres of them. I think the real reason for problems with distribution is little desire and incentive to build infrastructure.

    • Re:I dont understand this "cheap electricity" thin (Score:5, Informative)

      by hidden ( 135234 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @07:09PM (#22448968)
      Transporting large amounts of power still costs money... all those 320kV lines? Those use large amounts of copper ($$), they have to be mantained ($$)... There are some lines in place, yes, but the more power you send farther, the more cable you have to run, and up goes the cost of providing the power. That cost then gets passed on to the consumer, in the form of not-so-cheap-any-more electricity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GregPK ( 991973 )
      It's more of a local contract thing. In order to build the plant they had to say they'd sell everything the locals needed in exchange for building the plant. Then, its the power brokers who make the fortune selling it across the US.

      In San Francisco PG&E could easily get another MW by bumping up the incentives for solar power in the local area affected. Incentives should be market driven. Basically if you live in an area where there are a lot of companies looking to use up more power. Instead of mov

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 )
      Not from around here, I take it? We have an entire department of uneconomical projects. We call it the Bureau of Reclamation. Their job is to build vast, expensive capital projects and subsequently give the benefits to select landowners for a pittance. For example, the Bureau will build a dam and sell the electricity to nearby farmers well below the market price of electricity, sometimes even below the cost of generation. The Bureau will then also sell the water from the dam to the same farmers at a fix

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by arminw ( 717974 )
        ....the Bureau will build a dam ....

        Could you please tell everyone here, when and where, lately, the bureau has built a large dam, on the scale of any of those on the Columbia?

    • Because transporting information is a hell of a lot cheaper than transporting electricity.

      The only product Google sells is digital information. Transporting data is dirt cheap. So Google could care less where the data is, as long as they can access it quickly.

      Transporting electricity requires big cables made of very expensive metals. Power transmission systems are massive and require a lot of maintenance. They are affected by wind, ice, and lightening. The amount of power Google uses is not at all trivial to have run into urban or suburban areas. Worse yet, when electricity is transmitted, a lot of it leaks out along the way.

      Compared to electricity, transporting information is dirt cheap. Data can be transported by much less expensive and much smaller fiber optic cables. Fiber optics require a lot less maintenance than power lines. Lightening strikes, ice, and high winds don't usually have any impact on fiber backbones. Better still, comparatively tiny amounts of electricity are needed to maintain data integrity over long distances. And unlike power transmission, the valuable stuff being transmitted doesn't leak out along the way.

      All Google cares about is getting the information back and forth between its users. So it really doesn't matter where the data center is. Electricity is even cheaper at places like Canada's James Bay project. I suspect the only reason Google doesn't go to places like that is the difficulty in getting quality staff to work so far north and so far from "civilization".

    • ....With 320 kV lines, you could transmit electricity.....

      The problem is that there are not anywhere near enough lines to carry the amounts of power involved, even if there were minimal losses. Environmentalism and NIMBY prevent the construction of new lines. Many would rather have an 8 lane freeway, rather than a huge ugly power line across or near their property. Most folks don't make such a fuss over an optical cable under ground.
  • Most people who drive through The Dalles leave thinking of it as just another Pacific Northwest backwater surviving on ranching and apple orchards. But there has to be one hell of a fiber optic connection running up that way these days...

  • Saskatchewan (Score:3, Informative)

    by corychristison ( 951993 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @06:38PM (#22448768)
    Come put one in Saskatchewan. It would benefit our economy and our (commercial) power rate is 0.0845-ish per kWh.

    • Re:Saskatchewan (Score:4, Funny)

      by moderatorrater ( 1095745 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @08:44PM (#22449504)
      That would be offset by the cost of having to learn a new language, new customs, etc. I mean, what's the exchange rate between a hockey goal and a touchdown nowadays? When do you append "eh" to the end of a sentence? How, exactly, are you supposed to say "schedule"? These are all serious barriers to companies relocating to Canada.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by corychristison ( 951993 )
        Haha.

        You use 'eh?' pretty much when you please. "How's it going, eh?" is a prime example.

        I pronounce schedule as "skedual." Others in the area pronounce it as "shedule." Both are widely accepted.

        As for the Hockey vs Football remark, I'm not sure. Considering the two dollars are pretty close at the moment, I'd have to say that would be a pretty good metric to go on.
    • Turn that comment around: Why isn't Google coming to Saskatchewan? If it makes financial and business sense for them to do so, I'm sure they would. Guesses off the top of my head:

      1) Insufficient bandwidth or connectivity.
      2) Insufficient supply of locals with technical expertise.
      3) Bad political climate (taxes, labor laws, environmental laws).

      I don't know if any of these are true. Why don't you write Google and find out the reason and what it would take to get them to build there? Your local politicians

  • NY's North Country (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Saturday February 16, 2008 @06:43PM (#22448806) Homepage
    They should build a data center here in New York State's North Country. We have cheap and plentiful water power, plus its cold enough in the winter that cooling the data center is simple: just open a window.

  • The new industry (Score:5, Interesting)

    by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @06:43PM (#22448808)
    50 years ago the Columbia river gorge was filled by the aluminum industry looking for cheap electricity to run their furnaces.

    I guess Internet servers are the new fires of industry.

  • Google's new slogan: (Score:5, Funny)

    by LM741N ( 258038 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @07:14PM (#22448998)
    Download a file, kill a salmon.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • If they want cheap electricity and cooling, they should build a centre near Churchill falls [wikipedia.org]. It's a naturally cold place, and electricity produced at the massive hydroelectric plant there is presently sold to Hydro-Quebec at an unconscionably [empireclubfoundation.com] reduced rate (i.e. the market value prior to the pre-1970's oil crisis). It's a ripe situation to be taken advantage of by a company that benefits from cheap electricity.

  • As an Oregonian... (Score:5, Informative)

    by rampant mac ( 561036 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @07:39PM (#22449144)
    I live in Portland and this is the first I've heard of various tech companies building along the Columbia. It kind of sucks to see Oregon becoming more popular - something like 95% of the state lives west of Portland. I don't want to see the state becoming like California.

    So if you're thinking of moving to Oregon, remember: It rains here ALL THE TIME. There's hippies everywhere. Nearly half the women in Portland are lesbians too!

    Actually, I didn't make that last line up. :(

    *sigh* Ever our governor once said "Oregon: a nice place to visit, but please don't stay."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shados ( 741919 )
      If you wanted to keep horny nerds away, you shouldn't have added that last one.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by gitargr8 ( 966020 )
      As far as I can tell, you didn't make any of them up ;)

    • Re:As an Oregonian... (Score:5, Funny)

      by LM741N ( 258038 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @08:45PM (#22449506)
      I was in a state office and blurted out "Oregon has much natural beauty, but as a state it sucks." I thought I committed a faux pas, but everyone started laughing.

      Its true. We have a do nothing photo op governor who is a democrat, both houses of legislature are controlled by democrats, and nothing gets done despite all of that. We are the laughing stock of states in the union.

      (oh, I forgot- "save the children," "pedophile related," and "meth laws" always pass) but thats the same anywhere
    • About the third disincentive you listed, dude, you just got every typical Slashdot nerd thinking about moving to Portland ;)
    • Ever our governor once said "Oregon: a nice place to visit, but please don't stay."

      And on the other hand, the Oregonian government encourages some people to stay.

      For a while, the Oregon state government and the Oregon chamber of commerce advertised in California. I remember seeing billboards and signs in San Francisco BART stations which say things like:

      "Come move to Oregon, we're cheaper then California!"
      "Bring your business to Oregon, we'll give you a tax break."

      Just last week I saw an ad encouraging Cali

    • Re:As an Oregonian... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SendBot ( 29932 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @10:33PM (#22450010) Homepage Journal
      I don't mind the inbound people as much as their attitudes in the non-summer seasons. I live in Oregon *because* I love the weather and environment year-round. Sucks every time I hear some whiner complain about how much they hate "days like this" if it's not 65 and sunny.

    • Re:As an Oregonian... (Score:4, Funny)

      by mxs ( 42717 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @11:27PM (#22450300)

      So if you're thinking of moving to Oregon, remember: It rains here ALL THE TIME.
      So let's recap. You are on slashdot, home of the nerds. The nerds who sometimes need an excuse not to go out. Rain is a perfect excuse. It raining all the time makes it a perpetual excuse. That's one crowd you'll attract.

      There's hippies everywhere.
      Perfect ! Police are going to be busy busting people for pot possession, thus way too busy to bow to the MAFIAAs each and every demand. Therefore you just attracted all the pirates of the interwebs. Well, ok, many of them are potheads, but not to worry -- many hippies means a steady supply of pot. You just got yourself another crowd ready to move to Oregon.

      Nearly half the women in Portland are lesbians too!
      This is what nerds and pirates consider entertainment. (ding, ding, more incentive !) Also, seeing as how half the women in Portland are eligible, you just attracted a drove of lesbians looking for partners. Maybe they'll even "convert" some. Yippeeh ! More entertainment !

      Actually, I didn't make that last line up. :(
      No, you just grabbed it out of your ... err ... well. Sure, there is a higher concentration (particularly in Portland), but honestly, half ? To quote Mr. Cosby : Riiiiiight.

      *sigh* Ever our governor once said "Oregon: a nice place to visit, but please don't stay."
      Tourists = $$$.

    • Re:As an Oregonian... (Score:4, Funny)

      by mysticgoat ( 582871 ) on Sunday February 17, 2008 @02:03AM (#22451118) Homepage Journal

      Nearly half the women in Portland are lesbians too!
      Actually, I didn't make that last line up. :(

      Actually, Portland is also home to one of the largest populations of persons who are in the process of altering their gender. At Saturday Market, First Thursday in the Pearl or Last Thursday on Alberta Street, or any afternoon on NW 23rd Avenue or SE Hawthorn, you can count several representatives of more than half a dozen distinctly different genders in fifteen minutes.

      Oregon has places that everyone should visit. Such as Seaside (ask about the exploding whale). The Falls at Oregon City (stay upwind of the paper factory). The Interstate Highways through Portland and Eugene are always good for hours of radio entertainment during the weekday commuting times. So do bring your tourist dollars. But you will want to leave before the rains set in, because it takes years to learn how to manage your personal crop of bodily mildew, and that learning experience is not pleasant for the student or anyone in proximity with a working nose.

  • Where is the fuel for all those generators in case of a long term outage? Or are they going to depend on the small tanks under the generators? Or are they going to depend on a natural gas supply?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xaxa ( 988988 )
      I don't remember exact words, but from what was said in a Google Tech Talk at my university I'd guess they'd just let it go off -- they have very good redundancy. I think they'd mark whatever is in that datacentre as "soon to be offline" and other datacentres would increase the redundancy of that data.

      (Of course it depends why there's an outage, if the outage has taken a chunk of the west coast with it then maybe they don't need the capacity. If they do need the capacity it might be different -- maybe the

  • The Columbia flows from BC thru WA/ID and WA/OR (Score:3, Informative)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @07:57PM (#22449266) Homepage Journal
    I don't know for sure about the other states/province but they've been trying to get tax writeoffs (aka bribes of tax dollars) to build more server farms here in Washington State.

    And supposedly, the other states - Oregon and Idaho.

    British Columbia, which has most of the dams (and is building two Columbia River treaty dams now near Revelstoke BC and Trail BC) provides most of the power, so I presume they may also be included in these attempts to get tax subsidies plus cheap power.
  • I'm not sure where they're coming up with that 500 W/sf number, even for 2011. The numbers I've been seeing and designing to are more like 200-300 W/sf. Above that, things get awfully tricky to cool using just air. Take a rack at 500 W/sf. The rack footprint with access aisles (included in the industry standard definition of W/sf is the access space) is at least double the rack footprint plus space for pdus and support, so call it 20 square feet. So you need to move out 10 kW with air. Assuming a supply air

    • Re:500 w/sf "industry standard"??? (Score:4, Informative)

      by wwwillem ( 253720 ) on Saturday February 16, 2008 @09:29PM (#22449718) Homepage
      Let's try and do some math. A standard industry 1U server is nowadays using as much as 500 Watts. OK, for arguments sake, let's half that, utilization is not always 100%. Then we have 40 servers in a rack, so that adds up to 10 kW per rack.

      Now a rack is 2x3 feet, but you need space in front and at the back, so lets take 2 feet wide (that doesn't change) and 10 feet deep, a total of 20 sq.ft. In which case we get to a power consumption of exactly 500 Watt/Sq.Ft. Most datacenters will not have this model of 40 1U servers in a rack running at full blast. But Google probably is one of those that do exactly that.

      Once I was in a co-location datacenter where one of the cages was occupied by google. That was still the time when they built their own servers, 4 motherboards in a 1U tray, 144 MBs in a rack. In this case / cage :) I was looking at roughly 20 racks of servers. And the heat that came out of that row, man oh man, it was pretty intense.....

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Have you ever *measured* the power being consumed by a datacenter? A mere 100 W/sf will give off pretty intense heat, what is the *airflow*. How may square feet of duct or unobstructed underfloor was dedicated per rack? Could you stand upright in the supply ducting? The scale of honest 500 W/sf is very apparent. I don't use less than a 3' raised floor or a 24" main per row just for 300 W/sf (unless you're talking a little 500 sf university playroom, which essentially becomes part of the air handler unit). A

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by jhw539 ( 982431 )
          Doh! I hate it when I accidentally post anon... I'm the measurement worshiper above. In god we trust, all others bring data...
  • Hey guess what else gobbles up ENORMOUS quantities of electricity?

    Aluminum smelting. Yeah so the next time you wrap up some brownies for that bake sale outside your No Nukes protest - remember how much juice was used for that.

  • It'll be a great place for a data center, it's beautiful country...a geek paradise. Lots to do. Windsurfing in the gorge, mountain biking and hiking, skiing in the winter. A short drive to the Oregon coast going west and eastern Washington wine country to the east. Plenty of night life in Portland. Saturday Market under the bridge. Shop sales tax free in Oregon.

    I'm sure they'll have no problem recruiting for those jobs. They'll get to work with Bonneville Power Assoc. for their electric needs, in t

  • Just 'cause I know it gets butchered at times. It's "The Dalles" like "The Pals". And "The" is part of the name. Oh and just in case, "Willamette" is like "Want to bet?" (not "met tee") and it's Will-AH-met not Will-ah-MET", plus "Oregon" which rhymes with "Washington", not "Bon Bon"

  • what we lost (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sohp ( 22984 ) <(moc.oi) (ta) (notwens)> on Saturday February 16, 2008 @10:27PM (#22449960) Homepage
    At The Dalles is one of the many dams along the Columbia River that supply all that electricity. But before the dam was completed in 1957, it had been one of the most important places in North America for the indigenous people. On March 10, 1957, hundreds of observers looked on as a rising Lake Celilo rapidly silenced the falls, submerged fishing platforms, and consumed the village of Celilo, ending an age-old existence for those who lived there. [wikipedia.org]

  • If Google really wanted to save electricity... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by captzoden ( 1230806 ) on Sunday February 17, 2008 @02:45AM (#22451322)
    They should do this [blackle.com]. ;)

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