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Solar Powered Colocation
ferlatte writes: "There's a colocation facility available that uses nothing but solar power for their machines and local net. An article about them is available at ENN, and their own site is at Solarhost.com. Enviro-geeks might be interested." This would be fantastic for all the brick-and-mortar businesses breaking on to the Web that put 'environmentally friendly' stickers on their products in the eighties.
I support the idea of protecting the environment as much as anyone else, but I've always heard that solar power is a very costly alternative to other power sources. That's bound to be a factor here, since these costs would presumably end up being passed down to their customers. I'm far from an expert on prices for hosting, but these prices do seem higher than some others I've encountered.
Will people be willing to pay a premium to have their websites hosted in a solar-powered facility? It seems to me that if an individual or business wanted to be more environmentally-friendly, there would be many more effective steps to take than using solar power for their websites. It may sound impressive to switch to this hosting company, but I'd think that, for example, a program to reduce power consumption in a home or office would probably end up helping the environment more.
Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Nova means "star" in Spanish; nobody would confuse it for "no va". The Chevy Nova sold well in Spanish-speaking countries.
Another thought. If an amount X of fossil fuels produces Y energy, how much energy does it require to extract, process, transport, store, etc. that amount X? The argument always seems to have the POV that the burning of fossil fuels, it costs nothing to produce said fuel in the first place.
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The Future: Some assembly required; batteries not included.
I promised myself I wouldn't make any posts today to lose anymore Karma, but I've never been any good at keeping promises anyway, so...
I think it is rather narrow minded of so called "enlightened" people from other countries laughing at Americans for being concerned over our Gas prices. The fact is, our entire economy is linked to energy prices at one point or another. If the price of fuel raises by 50%, then so too must the price of bread raise, after all, part of the cost is the distribution.
It's linked into everything. It's not about spending $2 more to go to grannies on the weekends, its about keeping the prices of goods and services consistant with our current pay scale. If the price of everything goes up.. well thats inflation, and that's bad.
Also, it's unfair to compare prices on purely a monitary basis. You should also take into consideration the overal economy of an area. If it costs me $600 a month to rent a small 2 bedroom apartment, and elsewhere it costs $300 to rent the same apartment, elsewhere a person making less than I would still have more buying power.
Laugh all you want... our economy is still stronger than yours.
You have this *exactly* back to front. Patent law (which is a subset of intellectual property law, btw, the two are not synonyms) covers designs for physical objects, not ideas. The only way in which software or algorithm patents manage to get through is by patenting "A system composed of a computer and software, where the software ...." -- a clear abuse of the system, IMO. Patent law works well for physical objects, as a compromise between intellectual freedom and the "promotion of the useful arts".
Note also that patent law on physical objects does not prevent innovators from studying and improving their design -- the whole point of patents is to bring intellectual property into the public domain and avoid the alternative, which is trade secrets. You can study a patented mousetrap, improve the design, and patent your improvement, so long as you declare the original mousetrap as prior art and pay appropriate licensing fees if you market your invention.
You probably ought to do a bit more research before publishing articles in the press.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
really, whenever I see someone whining about 'the enviroment' I just substitute 'population' - there's a real problem but having more&more people consume less&less isn't the answer. Will humanity solve that one 'rationally' or will the age old limits of war, famine, disease etc. have to save the planet?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Correct, but you have got a wrong example for environmental awareness.
I would call this company envrironmentally friendly if it was somewhere in Death Valley or similar. It uses prime VA land instead. A waste of prime agricultural/habitable land imho is almost as bad as burning coal and oil if not worse.
It uses solar batteries instead of helioconcentrators. They have
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
-- Better to lose Karma than let the FUD go unchecked.
Diminishing returns also apply to oil, you know.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Where's the Open Source Solar Panel Initiative? I'll tell you; it's slightly less progressed than the Open Source Natalie Portman Initiative. That at least has a mailing list ...
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Most computers use switched-mode power supplies. These are a mainly INDUCTIVE load on the grid.
Um, don't most computer power supplies contain a large capacitor to even out the power factor? Your power company would be Unhappy if you decided to plug a substantial inductive load into your wall socket.
Even if the computers themselves overlook this, a co-lo facility wouldn't. IIRC you're billed substantially above the standard rate for your power if you have an inductive load. This is why most industrial machinery takes care to add enough capacitance to get a power factor near unity. A co-lo facility would add this to its server racks if the power supplies themselves didn't handle it, to minimize hassle from the power company.
Let's face it -- government regulations aren't working. Every time big industry gets close to having to adopt a cleaner power source, they moan and groan about how it will ravage "the economy" (read: Lee Iacoca's bottom line) and the government backs down again. We need to make it economically unsound to pollute. Why don't we environmentally-minded consumers just stop buying polluting products like cars and aerosol sprays? If enough people refuse to put up with pollution, everyone will be forced to follow the way of these kind of pioneers.
Secondly, where did you get the 90% efficiency rating for small generators? I assume your comment about 'thermal included' means using the exhaust to heat the building in the winter.
The last time I checked, an automobile engine was quite a bit more efficient than a lawn mower engine. The heat losses of large engines are proportionally lower than the heat losses of small engines. (Squared - cubed law; losses go as the surface area - heat production as the volume. That's why elephants have a lower metabolic rate than mice; elephants are more efficient because they have lower heat loss per unit of mass.) Simply because of size, the large engines in central generating stations are more efficient than the small ones industry could use.
What would really be neat is if some company devised a plan and started production of solar cells using free energy solutions such as solar-heat to power their machinery.. then it wouldn't matter so much that solar cells were inefficient because they are still better/easier for small applications.
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This is great, but what happens when it rains and people want to go look at your website as they can't be outside?
"HTTP/1.1 Error 1000 - Sun is not shining"
ok, technodork nitpick here... W/hr? umm, IIRC, Watts=kgm^2/s (E/T, joules=kgm^/s^2, div. by seconds...) hence, joules/hr, or just watts, is probably what they meant. Sorry to rant. And if I got my facts crossed up, oops.
If violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it. - MAJ Misato Katsuragi
Machines are different precisely because they are specific physical objects which are not generalisable to allow the patent holder to lay claims to vast swathes of human knowledge. The patent holder can make enough of a return on his machine to compensate him for development and to encourage him (or her) not to keep it secret, and that's all. Patent law works for machines. It doesn't work for things which aren't machines, which is why we have copyright law for artistic works and trademark law for distinctive commercial marks.
In the context of computer programs, which are neither machines, artistic works nor commercial marks, we clearly need a different IP regime. I don't believe that "anything goes" is the best regime, and will only be convinced otherwise when I see a significant "open source" effort which isn't a clone of something produced elsewhere. But whatever that regime, it is unlikely to be then the best model for machines.
There are a lot of good books on this subject; some of which are only slightly longer than this series of books. I really recommend you read one.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
When you say "solar power", you really ought to say what *kind* of solar power. Hydroelectric power is solar power (and much more efficient and cost-effective than photovoltaics). So is fossil fuel. Wind power is solar + lunar power (gravity). Nuclear power... hmm.. not sure about that one.
Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
Now, let's get down to all the other pollutants that they didn't get rid of:
- lead - and lots of it, in each computer, in every monitor's glass, they'll still have lots of lead in their equipment, and I'm guessing they won't be extracting it before getting rid of their old hardware when it comes time
- ozone - any time you run an electric motor (fan, power supply, dustbuster, whatever) some atmospheric oxygen gets zapped into ozone, an element of smog
- VOC's - Volatile Organic Compounds, which will be emitted from their new furniture and carpet over the next few years, unless they chose to go with solid wood furniture and simply stain or oil it (which I highly doubt)
Simply put, it would be extremely expensive to start up a business (ANY business) that is 100% environmentally-friendly. While I would applaud this, what they have done is simply started yet another hosting service, and are serving up this solar powered schtick for publicity.Their hearts are in the right place, but unfortunately it's just not enough.
Mr. Ska
Or better yet, build houses out of the trees. There are billions of tons of carbon locked up in homes aroudn the country.
I never thought I'd do this, cuz I hate seeing posts like these, but dammit I submitted this story WEEKS ago. :-(
2000-07-26 19:42:44 Clean energy to power VA-based ISP (articles,science) (rejected)
Los Bastardos!
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
> a solar cell today still takes more energy to manufacture than it will produce in its usable life.
OK. Solar cells; yes. Solar power; no.
Solar cells are not currently designed to be used in power plants or anything of that nature because usually the cost of production does not justify the profit that one can make selling the electricity. You're part correct in that "it takes more energy to make them blah blah blah" which is not entirely true; but disregarding that whole statement let me ask you this:
Have you ever seen a solar power plant?
Barring a couple exceptions they don't use solar cells. They use semi-parabolic reflector arrays (not even mirrors really) that work kind of like a huge fresnel mirror to reflect sunlight up onto a gigantic black obelisk-looking tower that has pipes running through it. The reflectors are all on gimbals so they can move through the day to continue to reflect light onto this tower correctly. The thing gets HOT. Water is pumped through the pipes to make steam which drives turbines. It's the same electricity generation process as nuclear, coal/oil, and geothermal plants all use.
Diss on solar cells all you want - they really are kind of a black thorn in the side of environmentalists; but please do not rip on solar power.
~GoRK
He's talking about a freaking creek running through your backyard! If you live on a steep hillside (let's say northern New Mexico around Carson National Forest for a good example) and you have this little stream that comes tumbling down the mountain on your property, what you do is this:
Build a pipe that can carry the water from the high point to the low point (4 inch PVC is usually quite sufficient); build a small pond at the top fed by the stream and drained by the pipe; then put a turbine at the bottom of the pipe and discharge the water into the stream bed. In good locations you only have to interrupt the flow of water for a couple hours while your little pond fills up and you remove a whole 75 feet of streambed.
These are feeder streams; not creeks; not rivers. There are no fish. A bear can walk another 50 feet to drink water with no problems and if you're worried about harming a bunch of algae - well I dont know what to say to you. Obviously you are extremely mixed up.
MICRO-HYDRO not the Hoover Dam
~GoRK
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Most computers use switched-mode power supplies. These are a mainly INDUCTIVE load on the grid.
"When the grid was made", most of the stuff on it was (well, MOSTLY still IS) RESISTIVE loads like filament bulbs and heating elements.
I understand that the big increase in INDUCTIVE loads, though not providing an actual POWER CONSUMPTION problem, does provide some kind of a STABILITY problem. The grid people can add in all kinds of filters and stuff to balance the effect of too much inductive load, but then when any tiny section of the grid drops out, the resulting spike upsets the inductive loads and the filters in adjoining sections of the grid, which will also pop their big oil-filled grid fuses, which will in turn produce a spike that upsets THEIR neighbours, etc etc etc... In a nutshell, the entire grid is balancing on a knife edge, which is getting sharper and sharper every day as we add more inductive loads to it.
There's no problem actually generating ENOUGH POWER... The problem is keeping the whole grid stable.
This is probably less of an issue if, instead of using a big unstable grid, you're generating your own electricity from solar arrays, and filtering and balancing it however you want.
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
'' We're the Sun in ".sun". ''
'' The Sun IS the computer! ''
It's 11pm, do you know what your deamons are up to?
OK, I'm sorry I don't have good links available, but here goes. There was a pice on ZDNN a while back about growth of the US power grid. In 1990, computers used less than 1% of US power, they now use 13%. Power capacity (or grid capacity, not sure which -- there's a difference) has grown only 4%. The problem is expected to get worse, not better, esp. with deregulation of the industry. The Register had a piece a while ago about how new colo facilities seem to want to locate in London for the high connectivity, but, as a result of power restrictions, had to specially contract with the power utilities to get extra capacity added and more lines run, costing in the millions for a new colo for power setup alone. Anyway, that's all I remember...
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Not only that, it's an NT only web hosting facility. I don't think I'll be trusting my site to them anytime soon, then. Furthermore, they've got some pretty strict rules about what you're allowed to host there:
Whether or not you like porn, claiming that's it detrimental to society makes me wonder what else they deem objectionable.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
BTW, there is no corporate conspiracy not to improve them just like there isn't a corporate conspiracy not to "break the speed of light" It's called the laws of physics.
Oh yeh? And from which fundamental cosmological principles do you deduce your estimate of "the amount of power consumed by people per square meter"? You patronising prick. Who's this "people"? Chinese peasants? Indian cattle farmers? African subsistence farmers? Or are you, perhaps, referring to the amount of power consumed by the fat, greedy asses of USians, incapable of seeing the connection between ice cream and morbid obesity, let alone between carbon dioxide and global warming.
Listen, you dickhead, you ought to think about the implications of your point. If it's true (which I doubt) that the theoretical maximum amount of energy realisable per square metre is less than that used by humans, then we're fucked. We don't have any other sources of energy that aren't finite. Now what was that I was saying about future generations?
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Solar cell technology still has a long way to go because it still has one nasty catch:
a solar cell today still takes more energy to manufacture than it will produce in its usable life.
Solarhost is a good step forward to establishing a market value for the use of green-er power, but considering that the energy demand spurred by the 'net needs to demonstrate a much larger energy payoff, I'd be more game for hosting businesses that promise the state of the art in energy efficienct servers. (And for chip manufacturers that pay more attention to their wattage requirements and not worry so much about hertzage.)
A: Sun boxen!
Mwahahahaha.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
I don't have a laptop, and, therefore, don't have one of these, but here's what they say about it: "Output of 13.8 watts will run some models better than others. At a minimum it will triple your run time on the internal battery, or recharge in twice the time required by an AC plug." It doesn't support every laptop, but I think it may be worth checking out.
Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual.
1. What's that got to do with solar panels? and
2. What's that got to do with solar panels?
All I'm saying is that any objection to protection on intellectual property in non-physical data doesn't necessarily translate to physical items.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I remember seeing an ad in a catalog from igo.com (they carry accessories for laptops, PDAs and cellphones) that showed a solar panel that was the size of a large novel. You unzip it and it opens up to have two solar panels for charging your cell batteries or your laptop. Good Luck. On a whim I went just now and here is the link:
here for solar charger
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
The 'Captain Planet' view of polluters - that they are mutant villains who enjoy destroying the environment because they somehow thrive on polluted air and water is not very accurate.
In fact, automobiles are what cleaned up major cities in civilized countries. I know that is an outrageous sounding claim, but stop and think about it. If you really want to see pollution - replace all of the autos with horses.
The disease spread by the flies which thrive on horse droppings would make an impact not only on quality of life but on the length of it.
Every breath you take increases the CO2 load in the atmosphere with each exhale. Shall we all be required to wear some sort of catalytic converter to get rid of that CO2?
Sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that CO2. Life produces waste products - it can't exist without them. The 'My feces smell like roses' attitude of many people in the environmental movement is more than a little annoying.
Even plants pollute. The 'Blue Ridge' and 'Smokey' mountains in the US get their names from the layer of natural smog produced by the vegetation on them. (Ever smell a pine tree? That is a VOC you are smelling. Hit that VOC with sun light and you get smog.)
This is a Yin and Yang world; you can only do so well before you reach the limits of what you can do. Any solution creates an element of a problem.
Does this mean we ought to go back to the era of pre-pollution controlled cars? No - we can do better; for example adjust the ratio of NO to NO2 produced by the catalyst on a car and the automobile becomes a net DESTROYER of ozone; the amount of ozone created by exhaust products becomes less than the amount destroyed by combustion.
By the way, for all of you in Europe complaining about us here in the States - it sounds like old fashioned jealousy to me; everybody hates the rich kid. Quit lying to yourselves, if you could live the way we do here - you would do it in a heartbeat. The Europeans who move here tend to drive big cars and otherwise behave just like the natives do. Sorry, I refuse to accept a load of guilt for living in the US.
How many of you are willing to give up your Pentium III's and Athlons for less power consuming CMOS 8088's running at one Mhz? I thought so.
Wind has been used as an energy source for thousands of years. Up to 4000 years ago, the Babylonians and the Chinese used wind power to pump water for crops, and sailing boats were around long before that.
Wind power was used in Europe in the middle ages to mill (meaning grind) grain. This is where the term windmill comes from.
Micro hydro power is probably the least common of the three readily used renewable energy sources, but it has the potential to produce the most power, more reliably than solar or wind power if you have the right site. This means having access to a river or creek that has a high enough flow to produce useable power for a good part of the year. Many creeks and rivers are permanent, ie, they never dry up, and these are the most suitable for micro-hydro power production.
There was recently an article on CNN.com about European electricity providers being very concerned that an explosion of planned colocation facilities will strain the European grid to its limit. This is something we (or I, anyway) don't think about very much. There is a lot of talk about all the money and energy saved by the efficiencies of the "Internet economy," but all the powerful (and hot) equipment running the "Internet economy" must be using an enormous amount of power.
Does anyone know of any reliable estimates to how much power is being consumed by Internet-related hardware?
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
And here I always thought power plants produced electricity.. Well, I guess this is a good thing and all, but computers aren't exactly very power-hungry.. According to Alternative Power Systems, a home computer consumes 80-150 W/hr, which isn't much compared to air conditioning, electric heating, the light bulbs in your home, etc..
To make a difference with things like this, they need to suply power to a lot more than a small set of low-consumption computers. I seriously suspect these people of being more interested in doing CGI programming at 75$/hr than protecting the environment.. Besides, they're not even running Solaris :)
What we need are huge solar panels in space and wireless transmission of power down here to juice the stuff that eats a bit more than the websites.. But I guess that's not as profitable as selling "Powered by the sun" stickers to e-businesses ;)
--
Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!
This give a whole new meaning to "This website is powered by Sun."
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Solarhost specifically says they're using solar cells, hence my comment.
As for mirror farms, they indeed rock.
Not too many people in the Nort East, but apparently quite a few in the south, use heat-pumps to regulate home and water temperatures in their homes.
The way the system works is this: A sealed water circuit is run from the basement of the home down to several feet under the frost-line. There, there is a cistern that stays at a very constant temperature, somewherein the 50 degree range, year round. The water is circulated to a cooling, or heating unit via a heat-exchanger (sort of like an A/C and radiator). The temp difference provides a good deal of the energy for the system, so there is less need for a power hungry heater/compressor.
Now, my question is this: Since electrical power is used to drive a Peltier type cooler (used for CPU cooling), and since an inverse temperature difference accross a Peltier junction (cooling the hot side, heating the cool side) will cause the device to generate power.. Why not use a large-scale Peltier device, in conjunction with a geothermal heat-pump as described above, to run the CoLo facility?
Seriously, put one in Greenland and Scandinavia, where the temperature difference is more significant than in the temperate zones... They already make heavy use of geothermal out there anyway...
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Given the cost/inefficiency of solar cells, and
:) Geothermal
the huge area required to get reasonable amounts
of power, I think the solution to being environmentally friendly is to do two things:
generate power locally (avoiding distribution losses) and minimize power use.
1) Onsite generation of power avoids the ~30%
distribution losses. Running, say, natural gas
turbines onsite is cleaner than grid
generation sources as a whole (assuming you're
not in a nuclear area), and 30% efficiency gains
really add up. Waste heat in cogen can be used
to run chillers to cool the machines as well,
decreasing power demands. Onsite generation is
MUCH more reliable than grid power, assuming you
invest substantially in plant, staff, and
maintenance. Power can be sold back to the grid
if you are grid-connected. Cogen can be 90%
efficient if you include thermal energy, vs.
say 20% electrical energy from fuels burned in
remote power plants.
2) Minimize power use: this is tricky for a colo.
A lot of machines today are 200-300W each, but
there are alternatives, such as the Sun Netra T1
1U server, which only draw 30W. Decreased power
use also means decreased power consumption, which
is good.
One can also be efficient in cooling, using water-cooled chillers which heat-exchange with
natural bodies of water (lake, pond, North Sea),
only providing cooling where needed, rather than
in hallways, etc., using proper insulation of
cooled areas, etc. Using onsite power storage,
even if generally powered from the grid, allows
purchasing power during off-peak periods...do
something like pump from one reservoir to another
higher up during the night, and run a generator
from the flowing water during the day.
3) One could always move to Iceland
power is really nice. A lot of energy-intensive
industries were attracted to Iceland
(bauxite -> aluminum conversion, future planned
hydrogen production) by the US$0.01/KWh power. I
used to live in a country with US$0.35/KWh
electricity (Anguilla), and I must say, Iceland
is very attractive. Other good places would be
to set up near hydroelectric dams, in countries
like France which generate a lot of power from
clean nuclear reactors, etc.
If any of my customers cared enough to pay for it,
I'd put in a wind turbine and/or solar to augment
our cogeneration plant, to offset their own use.
I've experimented with wind and solar before,
and they're not suitable as a 100% site power
solution, but to augment fossil fuels, they're
quite nice.
#ruet
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kiss my cyberspace