Google's Addiction to Cheap Electricity

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."

Wind power?

[Shuntros (1059306)]

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.

Re:Wind power?

[calebt3 (1098475)]

It was proposed 42 years ago. It is still under review.

Re:Wind power?

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

Yes, and the advent of Global Warming Hysteria hasn't helped matters.
The sad truth that much of the exhaust labeled "hot air" was, in fact, methane, from flatus of the bull.
If word gets out, people might realize that real-world cowpies have more intrinsic value
than the Congressional variety [stephenbainbridge.com].
Please allow Congress the dignity "hot air".

Re:Wind power?

[The Second Horseman (121958)]

No, I got it. It would be hard not to - I think I've heard a "hot air in Washington DC" joke about, oh, four or five times a week for the past 35 years. But the power situation in the DC area is particularly bad, so I figured I'd point out that it's a lousy place to try build a data center.

Power and Cooling - the top DataCenter expenses

[colinmcnamara (1152427)]

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

[dbIII (701233)]

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:Power and Cooling - the top DataCenter expenses

[Mike89 (1006497)]

dude, google is kind of an around the clock operation :p

Google have so many datacenters in so many places that loosing one at 3 am isn't going to break anything.

Re:Power and Cooling - the top DataCenter expenses

[arminw (717974)]

....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.

For Profit Company is Cost Conscious

[Protonk (599901)]

News at 11.

Re:For Profit Company is Cost Conscious

[Russ Nelson (33911)]

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.

Re:For Profit Company is Cost Conscious

[ibbey (27873)]

My thought exactly. Since she clearly thinks that Google needs to reduce its energy usage, perhaps she can suggest a way to do so? The really ironic part of the article was when she criticized Google for offsetting their energy use by generating green energy. Apparently the fact that Google's competitors might not do the same somehow reflects badly on Google. I don't quite get it...

Thats' not the point.

[nuckfuts (690967)]

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.

[The tECHIDNA (677584)]

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.)

Re:They Could Buy Different Servers

[Waffle Iron (339739)]

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:Google Environmental Conscience

[MightyYar (622222)]

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.

NY's North Country

[Russ Nelson (33911)]

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

[im_thatoneguy (819432)]

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:

[LM741N (258038)]

Download a file, kill a salmon.

As an Oregonian...

[rampant mac (561036)]

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:As an Oregonian...

[LM741N (258038)]

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

Re:Connection...

[mrxak (727974)]

Quick, submit a new story to /., "Google uses lots of internet bandwidth".

Re:I thought they were going green?

[Russ Nelson (33911)]

The sun goes down at night (you need to get out more), and the wind stops. Water, on the other hand, doesn't stop falling.

Re:I dont understand this "cheap electricity" thin

[hidden (135234)]

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.

Because Transmitting Data is SO much Cheaper

[Mal Reynolds (676267)]

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".

Re:Saskatchewan

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

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.