miller60 writes "The data center building boom is causing backlogs for new generator orders, with some companies reporting delivery delays of up to a year for new 2,000kw units, which are the current standard for mission-critical facilities. Generator availability is 'the No. 1 thing that will drive your construction schedules,' according to Equinix, which is building centers in three major markets. 'This will be a big issue for the next wave of data center builds,' says another industry executive. Used generators and smaller units tend to be more available than the 2 megawatt units, but companies targeting the enterprise sector may be wary of relaying on used units or smaller generators than those powering competing facilities."
"Generator lead time for a nice 2 megawatt diesel engine is now up to a year for one generator," Josh Snowhorn of Terremark said in a panel at the NANOG conference earlier this year.
HOLY MOLY, that's a lot of power! If you had 250 watt power supplies, all running at maximum, you'd be able to power 8,000 power supplies simultaneously! You could run a small town on a generator that large! Or to put it another way, you could use it to power a Diesel Locomotive capable of pulling dozens of fully loaded cars.
Wow, just wow. That's just an incredible amount of power to be putting in a datacenter. Is it even possible for these centers to run off the grid?
"So we can build all the raised floor we want, and then sit around and wait six months for a generator."
The part that I don't undestand is this: Why do they need just one generator? If you're having difficulties obtaining a 2Mw unit, wouldn't it make sense to get two smaller units? You'd waste a bit of extra space, but you'd have redundancy that a single genearator couldn't offer.
Why don't they just go find an old diesel locomotive and convert that into a generator? Or get a really big diesel truck. A diesel generator isn't much more than a diesel engine. I see opportunities here for new manufacturers.
A deisel train engine is a generator the traction motors on the train are just that motors that are driven by the generator. It's actually a really cool design for a vehicle and allows for breaking using resistive loads across the traction motors (aka dynamic breaking)
Well, converting an existing engine gives you the same, if not more, concerns as getting a used generator. As TFA mentioned, there's no problem finding used 2MW generators, but it's the stigma of using used equipment period.
Add to that the changes and parts necessary to change engines geared to creating propulsion to engines geared to creating electricity.
I doubt any company who considers their data center a key component of thier infrastructure to risk their backup solution on an untested refurbished generator.
I doubt any company who considers their data center a key component of thier infrastructure to risk their backup solution on an untested refurbished generator
New or used, it doesn't matter. Your SUPPOSED to testing the generator at least once a week. Besides, it's not good to have aged fuel in the tank. You end up with all sorts of fuel-line and injector clogging due to the fact fuel will take on properties of varnish.
Point is, it does't matter if it's used. If it does the job and can be verified to do so o
What you want is an old diesel-electric loco like the Alco S-2 [railfan.net] which is basically a 1000 HP diesel generator and some electric motors that you won't need. Imagine having one of these sitting outside your data center battery room. Unlimited nerd points.
You are correct that a GenSet is not that much more than a generator paired with a diesel engine, however the entire engine industry as a whole is somewhat supplier constrained.
If a new company were to come and attempt to meet the demand present they would be fighting for the same parts and resources that other more established companies are.
You'd have to look into the air pollution regulations. Depending on your location, there are fairly strict guidelines for generator engines. Staring in March, in NJ your generator cannot emit more than 1.5 g/bhp-hr of NOx no matter when you installed it (0.90 g/bhp-hr for new units). The current EPA standard (1997) for new train engines ranges from 5.5-14.0 g/bhp-hr (there is a stricter standard in the works). The current EPA standard (2004) for heavy-duty diesel vehicles is 2.4 g/bhp-hr. An old train or tr
"Wow, just wow. That's just an incredible amount of power to be putting in a datacenter. Is it even possible for these centers to run off the grid?"
The generators have to supply enough on demand power to satisfy peak requirements. Examples could be getting the elevator(s) stuck between floors to where they're supposed to go. Air conditioning is another large power drain and in a datacentre, there are huge quantities of heat contributing components to deal with. Even backup lighting utilizes a surprisin
The generators have to supply enough on demand power to satisfy peak requirements. Examples could be getting the elevator(s) stuck between floors to where they're supposed to go. Air conditioning is another large power drain and in a datacentre, there are huge quantities of heat contributing components to deal with. Even backup lighting utilizes a surprising amount of power.
So what you're saying is, the generator has to be able to power a small skyscraper in an emergency?
I would bet that a datacenter probably uses as much electricity as a small skyscraper. Because of the high equipment densities, a 1-story datacenter filled with racks probably has HVAC requirements that are like a multi-story office building filled with cubes. IT doesn't have the same lighting requirements, but that's not nearly the draw that heating and cooling are. Actually, I bet that in many situations, if you just pulled the plug on a 'center, very bad things might happen to the equipment, aside from th
I've often wondered why they don't liquid cool these, or use ducted air cooling, then recover a portion of the waste energy. Any time you have a temperature difference you can get some returns. Considering these datacenters generate so much thermal energy, you'd think they would attempt to recover some rather than spend *more* energy to move it outside.
This is why certain engine testing facilities use their dynos to power portions of their facility - instead of burning fuel and paying for electricity, they
On your comment about data center size: Consolidation is the buzzword of the decade. 'Big boy' data centers start at 2MW and get BIGGER. It's not uncommon for a main site facility to be closer to 4MW. These are usually fed from the grid at the 14kV level, often from dual substations. Yes it's a lot of CPUs and supporting equipment, but thats the way we like em!
Your question on two generators vs. one: Redundancy does NOT come from two half sized units doing a single job, it comes from two FULL sized units each doing half the job. Having two half sized generator units means losing one will cause failure. With a 10,000HR MTBF per unit (rough number used for demonstration) you get a system MTBF of 5,000HR, NOT what I would call redundant! You would need at least 3/2 redundancy (3 generators doing the work of 2) to have a reasonably reliable replacement for a single large unit.
So you are saying that having two smaller generators instead of one large one doubles the risk of power failure?
Doubles the risk of a show-stopper failure in the backup system, yes. Twin engine aircraft are required to be able to fly with one engine out for this very reason. A crude way to visualize it is that the MTBF rates are like unto the chance of rolling a Critical Failure in [your favorite RPG]. One generator rolls the dice every (x) amount of time, and TWO generators is essentially rolling the dice
The part that I don't undestand is this: Why do they need just one generator? If you're having difficulties obtaining a 2Mw unit, wouldn't it make sense to get two smaller units?
Keep reading the article--further down it says that large data centers (like MS and Google are building) need 20 or 30 2MW generators! My question: if you power requirements are that high, surely it must make sense to build your own powerplants? Multi-year construction time, I guess?
I know there are several 60-75MW units under const
The part that I don't undestand is this: Why do they need just one generator? If you're having difficulties obtaining a 2Mw unit, wouldn't it make sense to get two smaller units? You'd waste a bit of extra space, but you'd have redundancy that a single genearator couldn't offer.
I used to work at a company who had a lot of equipment at an MCI enterprise-grade datacenter. I forget the exact terminology but they apparently have different classes of datacenters, and this was at the top of the line. It was phy
The part that I don't undestand is this: Why do they need just one generator? If you're having difficulties obtaining a 2Mw unit, wouldn't it make sense to get two smaller units? You'd waste a bit of extra space, but you'd have redundancy that a single genearator couldn't offer.
Remember the old aeronautical engineering maxim of "twin engine planes have twice the rate of engine trouble as single engine planes". Point being, that sort of "redundancy" is only a net gain if you can actually "fly" with one of y
Wow, just wow. That's just an incredible amount of power to be putting in a datacenter. Is it even possible for these centers to run off the grid? 2MW at 33KV is only 60 amps, a 33KV 60A line is hardly going to be a challange to construct.
so linking them to the grid really shouldn't be a problem.
you'd be insane to try and run a datacenter off generators all the time. Electricity from deisel generators costs several times what grid electric costs even if you pay consumer prices for grid electricity.
Most places will let each cabinet get two 20-amp circuits, for roughly 5 kilowatts. That means you can only provide power forup to 400 cabinets. But don't forget, they also have to power all of their own equipement, and that you don't want to run a generator at 100% capacity. That means that you could be talking about as few as 200 cabinets from that sort of generator. That's still a good number of cabinets in a datacenter, but it's not the unbelievable size that seems to jump out at you when you think of
Step 1: Take a price from this map [michaelbluejay.com]. Step 2: Multiple that price times 2,000.
So for California, 2,000kWh would cost $240 per hour to run. That's $5,760/day, $40,320/week, and a whopping $2,096,640/year!
Of course, for diesel your prices may be higher. As of right now, diesel is approximately $2.669 per gallon [doe.gov] in California. To compute the costs, you'd need to know how efficient the generator is. This page [uaf.edu] claims "approaching 40%", so we can use that for a guesstimate. At about 146,520,000 joules per gallon of
Our datacenter has about 24,000 sq feet of raised floor (not huge by datacenter standards) and we have 2 x 2MegaWatt Generators (as well as redundant utility feeds). To say that 2MW is too much power in this case shows your lack of understanding of what a "MAJOR data center with plenty of redundancy" means.
Prior to working here, I was an engineer at one of the main datacenters for a big Texas based IT provider (think Ross Perot) and their datacenter had over 100,000 sq feet of raised floor. At last coun
Then you have to keep them phased together. That can be complicated and error-prone. When you're operating on diesel power and lose a generator, the load gets dumped on the remaining generators, which can cause large frequency errors and brownouts. To put a spare generator online, you have to match frequency and phase with a system that is under severe stress. It can get ugly.
If you've built out your data center but the generators have not yet arrived, a quick and inexpensive solution is to buy several thousand hamsters and hamster wheels. These will keep your data center humming along in the event of an outage. If PETA starts protesting, sysadmins with larger wheels can be substituted. Most of them will find this activity a welcome break from the inane busywork in their everday lives.
I've actually found that I get a better wattage/food pellet ratio with gerbils. Had to put them in as a temporary measure a couple years ago, but they've worked so well since we installed them that we never bothered to upgrade.
I heard of a guy in L.A. doing the same thing with ferrets, but I for one don't think I could stand the smell. Plus, the little tube-rats tend to escape and crawl under the flooring to nest, and that just raises all kinds of fire hazard issues.
You need to remember, its not just the computers & servers. Its the lights, the heating/AC, all other power needs. We have a generator at my work and it has to power EVERYTHING. 100 desktops 34 thin clients, 19 laptops, 34 servers, the A/C for the data center, the elevator, the emergency lighting, fire detection system, phones... you get the idea. We have a 30 KVA battery backup for the data center in case the generator doesn't kick on the right way.
I studied this topic for work this year and learned that the current data center rule of thumb is that for every watt that you spend powering a server, you must spend another watt on air conditioning...and it gets worse. Now, with servers getting smaller (e.g., blades) and CPUs evolving to multi-core, heat and power usage density is increasing dramatically within the same floor space...and cooling it effectively ranges between difficult and nearly impossible...without ripping everything out and starting over
Wouldn't having datacenters switch over to DC power and then just using a massive battery backup system help with this? Or batteries more exspensive than having generators.
I'd still keep a few generators in backup, but woulnd't you need less of them with DC?
You can keep your generator(s) running indefinitely. Certainly longer than any predictable power outage, but if you're running on batteries you're against the clock. What are you going to do when they start to run down - nip over to the 7-11 and buy all the AAs they've got?
Yes, you'd need fewer, but the scale they are talking about is still way too cost prohibitive for batteries... it sounds like in this case, there are no mains... just generated power. Even so, you couldn't just use a battery to cover anything but super-brief mains outages, because the extended runtimes would probably require way too much in the way of battery cost, weight, floor space, etc.
Take out a $10,000 simolian loan and place a natural gas power plant in a corner. It costs $9,000 simolians and produces "moderate pollution", so residential and commercial zones won't develop well nearby. But your city won't grow quickly without a lot of power.
I didn't see any delays on a project I am working on. We have 4 Gens in the 2MW range plus 3 gas/diesel gens in the 30MW range. Of course, this isn't for a datacenter, but I wonder if the generators would be the same.
You would think that companies that make larger generators (I'm talking > 100kW) would understand that demand goes up during hurricane season, and things of that nature.
We only encountered a one month delay on delivery of our 125kW natural gas fired generator. Our delay was mostly because of hurricane Katrina having struck the gulf coast. We had to pull some serious string but since we wouldn't be moving in until November of 2005, it didn't really impact us.
Wrap the entire building in foil. Add a layer of thin dielectric, then another layer of foil.
Must remember to put rubber mats in all the entryways, of course.
Bonus benefit: no need for a security system. Just give the phone number of the county coroner to the janitor, so that if someone tries to break in overnight, the bodies will be cleaned up before anyone arrives for work in the morning.
I was having dinner with an IT guy from Skywest Airlines the other night and he told me in the last big power outage in St. George, Utah where they're based (and I live) their battery backups ran out quickly and there was a hardware problem between their generators and their IT department.
The end result is that all of their servers and network equipment went out for hours, and they had to cancel a whole lot of flights costing the company well over $1,000,000.
You can buy a lot of crappy gas generators at the Lowes across the street for $1M. I think I would have sent two guys there and two guys to the gas station to keep the essentials online.
There is a lot to be said for redundancy. Redundancy is very important. You can't talk about redundancy enough. Seriously, it's better to be twice as redundant than only half as redundant. And three times as redundant is even better than twice!
One of the biggest delays we had building a new data center was in acquiring the transfer switches.... even once the generators and UPS systems were installed, they're useless without the transfer switches. There was about an 8-month lead time on those, and heaven help you if one of them arrives DOA.:)
Seems like the general environmental trend is to tear down the dams built in the 1930's (at least in California). Some of these dams also provide hydro-electric power. While most data centers are looking for on site power, you have to wonder if we're shooting ourselves in the foot by reducing the amount of power being generated from the dams to the grid. New natural gas and nuclear power plants are great if they get built but usually the NIMBY's will come out in force against a new plant.
Some of these dams also provide hydro-electric power
I forget where I read it but I recall something about this being one of the key reasons Google was building a huge datacenter complex in Oregon on the Columbia river. Not only does it provide cheap electricity from hydro power dams but the river also provides cooling for the datacenter.
I see a lot of posts that 2MW is a lot of power. Perhaps.
There are many facilities out there with 10-30 2MW generators. I personally worked on a facility that had 18. 12 were for "critical load", that is, things fed via UPS's. This included all of the servers and networking equipment, the NOC, emergency lighting, fire supression systems and soforth. The other 6 were for "emergency load", these were things that did not need UPS protection (they could go down), just not for long. Virtually all of this load was air conditioning. So when the power went out the A/C's went off and came back 30-60 second later on generator, while the servers and all stayed up the same time.
While big, it's far from the largest facility out there.
Now, why would you buy one generator? Well, many buildings use bus variations (the whole N+1, or N+2 thing). So you build your data center for all 18 generators (as above), but install 6 and 3, or half the capacity. You now wait for the building to fill to 25-30%, and then start adding more generators, one at a time. However, they now have to be matched to the other generators.
Now, why are data center generators special? Well, to switch from one AC source to another the two loads must be approximately in phase (there is some tolerance, but it's small). So in order to be able to switch between generators, switch from UPS to generator, and all that other stuff you need additional circuitry to keep the generator just so. While the engine block and generator were the same as say a diesel locomotive, there were some additional sensors, lots of additional computer control, and some additional quick start features.
Most sites want their backup generators to be "ready to load" in 15-30 seconds. Indeed, several manufacturers make 10 second ready to load units. However that requires things like engine oil and coolant heaters that basically keep the entire motor warm 24x7x365. These are not found on industrial generators or locomotives.
So, they really are special, high tech tight tolerance units designed to work in a system. When you connect to WoW or your other large game you're probably one one of a thousand servers run by that company, who is one of but hundreds of companies in the larger colo facilities. It's not uncommon to find 50,000 servers under a single roof. So you need lots, and lots, of 2MW generators.
suprisingly not.. it is only the first two that battle it out.. the lower power source will sync up with the greater power source when you combine them (AC)
this is what happens when they bring new powerplants on the grid.. for a short time there is some phase issues but within minutes the new plant will be in sync with the rest of the grid.. i assume this would apply to using these smaller sources
Your product is interesting but there is a difference. The reason the cost per KW of engines over about 500KW starts to rise is that they are designed for very long life. Unlike gas engines, where when you get outside the cylinder size range of about 50-500cc things start to go downhill, Diesels scale to enormous cylinder sizes but, because the mean piston speed needs to be constant, power goes up as the 2/3 root of cylinder volume. Mass scales more closely to volume, so mass rises faster than output. However, the benefit is that the wear life of a larger cylinder is much greater, because it can tolerate larger amounts of linear wear before blowby becomes excessive.
The implications are that while the cost per installed KW of your multi-engine plant is about the same as that of a single 2MW unit (because of the additional switching and control gear) it will not have the same service life and its lifetime cost per KW is higher.
Correctly and honestly, you describe your generators as backup. But larger units in the 2MW and over range can be used as primary generators. That's the difference. As somebody else has observed elsewhere, large units can be remote controlled by electricity utilities for handling load peaks. This means that their asset utilisation can be much higher than standby generators in well designed stationary applications. The lifetime cost per KWH of a backup generator can be very high because its first cost is amortised over low running hours.
Fact is, 2MW isn't a big Diesel. It's portable power (as used in trains and boats.) That's why supply and demand is likely to vary according to major events like earthquakes and wars.
2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:5, Funny)
HOLY MOLY, that's a lot of power! If you had 250 watt power supplies, all running at maximum, you'd be able to power 8,000 power supplies simultaneously! You could run a small town on a generator that large! Or to put it another way, you could use it to power a Diesel Locomotive capable of pulling dozens of fully loaded cars.
Wow, just wow. That's just an incredible amount of power to be putting in a datacenter. Is it even possible for these centers to run off the grid?
The part that I don't undestand is this: Why do they need just one generator? If you're having difficulties obtaining a 2Mw unit, wouldn't it make sense to get two smaller units? You'd waste a bit of extra space, but you'd have redundancy that a single genearator couldn't offer.
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
Add to that the changes and parts necessary to change engines geared to creating propulsion to engines geared to creating electricity.
I doubt any company who considers their data center a key component of thier infrastructure to risk their backup solution on an untested refurbished generator.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
New or used, it doesn't matter. Your SUPPOSED to testing the generator at least once a week. Besides, it's not good to have aged fuel in the tank. You end up with all sorts of fuel-line and injector clogging due to the fact fuel will take on properties of varnish.
Point is, it does't matter if it's used. If it does the job and can be verified to do so o
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:5, Funny)
Plus, you'd have to deal with all the eels.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If a new company were to come and attempt to meet the demand present they would be fighting for the same parts and resources that other more established companies are.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're saying is, the generator has to be able to power a small skyscraper in an emergency?
Small skyscraper (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I bet that in many situations, if you just pulled the plug on a 'center, very bad things might happen to the equipment, aside from th
Re: (Score:2)
I've often wondered why they don't liquid cool these, or use ducted air cooling, then recover a portion of the waste energy. Any time you have a temperature difference you can get some returns. Considering these datacenters generate so much thermal energy, you'd think they would attempt to recover some rather than spend *more* energy to move it outside.
This is why certain engine testing facilities use their dynos to power portions of their facility - instead of burning fuel and paying for electricity, they
Re: (Score:2)
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
Your question on two generators vs. one: Redundancy does NOT come from two half sized units doing a single job, it comes from two FULL sized units each doing half the job. Having two half sized generator units means losing one will cause failure. With a 10,000HR MTBF per unit (rough number used for demonstration) you get a system MTBF of 5,000HR, NOT what I would call redundant! You would need at least 3/2 redundancy (3 generators doing the work of 2) to have a reasonably reliable replacement for a single large unit.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Doubles the risk of a show-stopper failure in the backup system, yes. Twin engine aircraft are required to be able to fly with one engine out for this very reason. A crude way to visualize it is that the MTBF rates are like unto the chance of rolling a Critical Failure in [your favorite RPG]. One generator rolls the dice every (x) amount of time, and TWO generators is essentially rolling the dice
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:4, Funny)
I agree. And just imagine the publicity value of having two smaller 1337 kW genenartors powering up your data center in tandem.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep reading the article--further down it says that large data centers (like MS and Google are building) need 20 or 30 2MW generators! My question: if you power requirements are that high, surely it must make sense to build your own powerplants? Multi-year construction time, I guess?
I know there are several 60-75MW units under const
After the next bubble crisis (Score:3, Funny)
Comming soon on eBay : 100MW generators
starting bid : 10$
condition : mint
reason : our startup went belly up.
When the next speculation bubble burst, there're sure going to be a lot of diesel mastodonts left every were...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I used to work at a company who had a lot of equipment at an MCI enterprise-grade datacenter. I forget the exact terminology but they apparently have different classes of datacenters, and this was at the top of the line. It was phy
Re: (Score:2)
Remember the old aeronautical engineering maxim of "twin engine planes have twice the rate of engine trouble as single engine planes". Point being, that sort of "redundancy" is only a net gain if you can actually "fly" with one of y
Re: (Score:2)
2MW at 33KV is only 60 amps, a 33KV 60A line is hardly going to be a challange to construct.
so linking them to the grid really shouldn't be a problem.
you'd be insane to try and run a datacenter off generators all the time. Electricity from deisel generators costs several times what grid electric costs even if you pay consumer prices for grid electricity.
say 4 kilo
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's still a good number of cabinets in a datacenter, but it's not the unbelievable size that seems to jump out at you when you think of
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Step 2: Multiple that price times 2,000.
So for California, 2,000kWh would cost $240 per hour to run. That's $5,760/day, $40,320/week, and a whopping $2,096,640/year!
Of course, for diesel your prices may be higher. As of right now, diesel is approximately $2.669 per gallon [doe.gov] in California. To compute the costs, you'd need to know how efficient the generator is. This page [uaf.edu] claims "approaching 40%", so we can use that for a guesstimate. At about 146,520,000 joules per gallon of
Hogwash (Score:3, Insightful)
Prior to working here, I was an engineer at one of the main datacenters for a big Texas based IT provider (think Ross Perot) and their datacenter had over 100,000 sq feet of raised floor. At last coun
Easy, just buy... (Score:5, Funny)
You may have to hire more people to start them, though. And change the oil.
Re:Easy, just buy... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
There is a stopgap measure for this (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I heard of a guy in L.A. doing the same thing with ferrets, but I for one don't think I could stand the smell. Plus, the little tube-rats tend to escape and crawl under the flooring to nest, and that just raises all kinds of fire hazard issues.
I can understand completely (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, with servers getting smaller (e.g., blades) and CPUs evolving to multi-core, heat and power usage density is increasing dramatically within the same floor space...and cooling it effectively ranges between difficult and nearly impossible...without ripping everything out and starting over
DC power? (Score:2)
I'd still keep a few generators in backup, but woulnd't you need less of them with DC?
Re:DC power? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Suggestion (Score:5, Funny)
not on my project (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What are the 4MW units if not diesel? If you're using Gas Turbines, that may explain why you didn't have the same supply problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Generator Delays (Score:3, Interesting)
We only encountered a one month delay on delivery of our 125kW natural gas fired generator. Our delay was mostly because of hurricane Katrina having struck the gulf coast. We had to pull some serious string but since we wouldn't be moving in until November of 2005, it didn't really impact us.
alternate solution (Score:2)
Must remember to put rubber mats in all the entryways, of course.
Bonus benefit: no need for a security system. Just give the phone number of the county coroner to the janitor, so that if someone tries to break in overnight, the bodies will be cleaned up before anyone arrives for work in the morning.
Skywest Airlines can tell you... (Score:5, Interesting)
The end result is that all of their servers and network equipment went out for hours, and they had to cancel a whole lot of flights costing the company well over $1,000,000.
You can buy a lot of crappy gas generators at the Lowes across the street for $1M. I think I would have sent two guys there and two guys to the gas station to keep the essentials online.
There is a lot to be said for redundancy. Redundancy is very important. You can't talk about redundancy enough. Seriously, it's better to be twice as redundant than only half as redundant. And three times as redundant is even better than twice!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just as bad .... (Score:2)
What about the dams... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I forget where I read it but I recall something about this being one of the key reasons Google was building a huge datacenter complex in Oregon on the Columbia river. Not only does it provide cheap electricity from hydro power dams but the river also provides cooling for the datacenter.
Clearing up a couple of misconceptions.... (Score:5, Informative)
There are many facilities out there with 10-30 2MW generators. I personally worked on a facility that had 18. 12 were for "critical load", that is, things fed via UPS's. This included all of the servers and networking equipment, the NOC, emergency lighting, fire supression systems and soforth. The other 6 were for "emergency load", these were things that did not need UPS protection (they could go down), just not for long. Virtually all of this load was air conditioning. So when the power went out the A/C's went off and came back 30-60 second later on generator, while the servers and all stayed up the same time.
While big, it's far from the largest facility out there.
Now, why would you buy one generator? Well, many buildings use bus variations (the whole N+1, or N+2 thing). So you build your data center for all 18 generators (as above), but install 6 and 3, or half the capacity. You now wait for the building to fill to 25-30%, and then start adding more generators, one at a time. However, they now have to be matched to the other generators.
Now, why are data center generators special? Well, to switch from one AC source to another the two loads must be approximately in phase (there is some tolerance, but it's small). So in order to be able to switch between generators, switch from UPS to generator, and all that other stuff you need additional circuitry to keep the generator just so. While the engine block and generator were the same as say a diesel locomotive, there were some additional sensors, lots of additional computer control, and some additional quick start features.
Most sites want their backup generators to be "ready to load" in 15-30 seconds. Indeed, several manufacturers make 10 second ready to load units. However that requires things like engine oil and coolant heaters that basically keep the entire motor warm 24x7x365. These are not found on industrial generators or locomotives.
So, they really are special, high tech tight tolerance units designed to work in a system. When you connect to WoW or your other large game you're probably one one of a thousand servers run by that company, who is one of but hundreds of companies in the larger colo facilities. It's not uncommon to find 50,000 servers under a single roof. So you need lots, and lots, of 2MW generators.
Re: (Score:2)
this is what happens when they bring new powerplants on the grid.. for a short time there is some phase issues but within minutes the new plant will be in sync with the rest of the grid.. i assume this would apply to using these smaller sources
Well, yes and no (Score:4, Informative)
Your product is interesting but there is a difference. The reason the cost per KW of engines over about 500KW starts to rise is that they are designed for very long life. Unlike gas engines, where when you get outside the cylinder size range of about 50-500cc things start to go downhill, Diesels scale to enormous cylinder sizes but, because the mean piston speed needs to be constant, power goes up as the 2/3 root of cylinder volume. Mass scales more closely to volume, so mass rises faster than output. However, the benefit is that the wear life of a larger cylinder is much greater, because it can tolerate larger amounts of linear wear before blowby becomes excessive.
The implications are that while the cost per installed KW of your multi-engine plant is about the same as that of a single 2MW unit (because of the additional switching and control gear) it will not have the same service life and its lifetime cost per KW is higher.
Correctly and honestly, you describe your generators as backup. But larger units in the 2MW and over range can be used as primary generators. That's the difference. As somebody else has observed elsewhere, large units can be remote controlled by electricity utilities for handling load peaks. This means that their asset utilisation can be much higher than standby generators in well designed stationary applications. The lifetime cost per KWH of a backup generator can be very high because its first cost is amortised over low running hours.
Fact is, 2MW isn't a big Diesel. It's portable power (as used in trains and boats.) That's why supply and demand is likely to vary according to major events like earthquakes and wars.
Parent