Slashdot Mirror
Google Campus to Become Solar-powered
prostoalex writes "Reuters is reporting that Google is equipping its headquarters with a solar panel 'capable of generating 1.6 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 1,000 California homes.' This will make Google's Mountain View campus the largest solar-powered office complex in the United States."
The wastful fuel they burn by flying that 747 of theirs around just for fun has a larger negative effect that the benefits this will bring.
Not just "not evil"
I can only google stuff when the sun is shining in Mountain View?
"A Google executive said the company will rely on solar power to supply nearly a third of the electricity consumed by office workers at its roughly one-million-square-foot headquarters. This does not include power consumed by data centers that power many of Google's Web services worldwide, he said."
That's great, I am really proud of them for using an alternative energy source (especially in such a sunny area) but most of their energy usage is those data centers and servers, not their employees. They purposefully did not give a % of total energy saved because it probably would have been on the order of 0.1-5%, which would have revealed the ridiculous amount of energy they actually use.
I wonder how easy the transition will be for them to leave Linux behind in favor of a sun powered setup.
Oh yes. I went there.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Just one Solar panel? What if it breaks? Will they need to replace the whole thing?
Yeah but wait til Google becomes too powerful, the only option we'll have to shut the computers down will be to black out the sky :-/
I think I heard a story about it once...
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
It's nice to see Google doing something about ensuring some part of the power they use is from renewable sources. Now if only they could do this with their data centers.
Just think if they bought an even bigger magnifying glass to mount over the panels!
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
The article didnt say anything about its physical size. I wonder how much space they would have to consume to supply that much power.
The google campus doesnt have that many buildings, I have this weird image in my mind of all their buildings completely covered by solar panels.
Call me when they hit 1.21 gigawatts!
OK, to be serious, this is a wonderful leap. Granted, it took a company as flush with cash and as well organized as Google to make the switch, but even if they're much better suited to do so, they can at least be an example to strive for.
And yes, I'm too lazy to google for the facts, it's 10pm for me and I'm about to have dinner.
I had JUST read this on Google's blog, and when I clicked back to Slashdot, boom: deja vu on the top of the front page (and not from a dupe! :P). Google blog article.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Imagine a Beowulf cluster running on these babies.
Now that's hot!
Why not set up an array and share it out to the community? Look at me, I'm on the way to self sufficiency, the rest of you fend for yourselves...
you know they'll have to have one....
Ballmer unleashed....yes, a campus run on fear
Well, I guess that's one way to keep people from working late...
Reuters is reporting that Google is equipping its headquarters with a solar panel 'capable of generating 1.6 megawatts of electricity
This is clearly the result of giving a cabal of nerds 130 billion dollars. Also, it's merely an order of magnitude short of the 1.21 gigawatts necessary for time travel.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
"This Search Powered By The Sun" -Now with 1/3 Less Evil?
Think there's any chance Google would start installing solar panels on their data centers? This would be a HUGE gesture of enviro-friendly computing, even if it did cost them a bundle. It would certainly get other data centers and large power consumers (like yahoo and microsoft) to consider following suit. Based on estimates posted at Wikipedia, they consume 20MW of power for their 450,000+ servers (which actually seems really low - only 50W per server?).
... let's see, 16 wind turbines vs. 150,000 solar panels ...
Assuming it's more like 80MW of power they consume (equivalent to ~60K homes), I wonder if there'd even be enough high quality solar panels to offset a majority of this power consumption? I guess it makes more sense for them to start building wind farms near their out-of-the-way GooglePlexes. Some 5MW wind turbines are being tested today - hmmm
BTW: here's a link to a more detailed article on the subject: SF Gate - Google sets sight on solar
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
I'm pretty sure that was a Matrix reference.
Morpheus says: "We don't know who struck first - us, or them. But we know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.
pretty powerful nuclear furnace.
I think the boys from They Might Be Giants summed it up best.
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
Yo ho, it's hot, the sun is not
A place where we could live
But here on Earth there'd be no life
Without the light it gives
We need its light
We need its heat
We need its energy
Without the sun, without a doubt
There'd be no you and me
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
The sun is hot
It is so hot that everything on it is a
gas: iron, copper, aluminum, and many others.
The sun is large
If the sun were hollow, a million
Earths could fit inside. And yet, the
sun is only a middle-sized star.
The sun is far away
About 93 million miles away, and that's why it
looks so small.
And even when it's out of sight
The sun shines night and day
The sun gives heat
The sun gives light
The sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun's
Atomic energy
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge
atom-smashing machine. The heat and light of
the sun come from the nuclear reactions of
hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
I wonder what the energy payback period is expected to be? I've heard up to thirty years for solar panels, which has always put me off because I would guess in 5-10 years there will be improvements in the amount of energy a panel can produce.
According to the EI Solutions website, it will only take 7.5 years to pay off the cost of the system.
All new building from this momnet forward should incorporate some solar and/or wind element for generating at least some electricity. There is absolutely no reason this cannot be written into the building codes of every citycounty/state in the US
I wonder how much this thing will cost to deploy, and if it will be able to pay for itself in energy savings after a while. I'm no expert on solar power at all, but some basic math seems to show that a 1.6 Megawatt system with 8 hours of sunlight per day would save somewhere around $900 USD per day in energy costs (Assuming 7 cents per KWh... I'm really not sure what the rates are out in Cali.) Seems like it would likely take quite a while to pay itself off at that rate...
The Property of One's : "The Oneitude is directly proportional to the Colditude of the one." - S.B.
Use of solar panels goes way back. I still can't believe Ronald Reagan took down those panels that Carter installed on the White House as well as axing the solar research program - weakass politics.. :(
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Did we cross the threshold of solar panel arrays giving off more power before the MTBF than it takes to create them? If not then this is just showing off, or maybe more simply some exeutive being missguided. Its just google being wastfull.
It happens when your rich, I suppose.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Does that include hiring someone to scrape off the bird shit from the cells?
The windfarms will take care of the birds. Crisis averted!
Then does the 7.5 years include the cost of setting up the Windfarm?
yes.
Yes! I mean, no. I completely made up the bit about the windfarm. It's bird shit, who cares? I'd be much more concerned about stray frisbees.
I hope Apple is next to follow in your footsteps.
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
OK. One square meter of solar panel is typically good for 130 watts at peak, but only about 655 watt hours per day, or 27 watts averaged over 24 hours. In other words, the average power is about 20% of the peak. So, to get 1.6 megawatts average power, you need about 60,000 square meters of panel, or an area 245 meters square. This is about two football fields of area, or three Wal-Mart Supercenter roofs.
A typical price for a good solar panel today is about $1000 for 160 watts peak. So to get 1.6 * 5 = 8 megawatts peak power, you need 50,000 of those panels, or about $50 million worth of panels. Batteries, inverters, and installation extra. (I suspect that Google is talking about 1.6MW of peak capacity, but that's a phony number to compare to other energy sources that can run 24 hours a day.)
There are already data centers that draw 30 megawatts continuous. That would take about a billion dollars worth of solar panels to power.
And by power plant standards, 30MW is dinky. Commercial power plants today run around a gigawatt.
What Google needs to do is buy one of those Russian Nuclear floating power plant,
or one of those float nuclear power plant that use in US submarine or aircraft carrier.
Imagine all the powers that Google can suck up - probably has enough spare electricity to sell back to Mtn View with a profit.
Having realised that their secret base is now visible from the air both in their own carefully controlled Google Earth, and in competitor's products, the non-evil geniuses plan to put a huge solar reflector up that can dazzle satellites and helicopters. All that remains is thinking of a plausible cover story...
Nihil Illegitemi Carborvndvm
*yawn* Isn't it time to find something more original, pal?
It's bird shit, who cares?
Wouldn't enough of it end up reducing the effectiveness of the panels?
Why don't they just hire the russians to build them a big floating nuclear plant?
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
I'd take that job, if it came with a Google salary and benefits.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
I would rather see them spend the money on super capcitors either in buying them to lower their costs or in research. As it is, their are plenty of buyers of the production. It is energy storage that needs to be lowered.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A major problem cited with developing nations is lack of infrastructure - a large part of which is power. By validating and making use of such technology common, it would be far easier to set up shop outside the US.
I don't want to read
With a bit of luck, small dust-devils will clean off the panels and it will end up running years longer than it was designed for....
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Dvorak predicts by 2050 the equator will become a PV cell belt, and will power the whole planet.
Yeah yeah, but they only did it because they predicted Google would do it! To look better than Google! See, Microsoft, is evil...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Payback depends on how you measure it.
0 25&ch=biztech; they provided the initial seed funding, according to a release on Nanosolar's web site: http://www.nanosolar.com/pr5-6.htm (see second release at this page).
If you measure it as "payback of the purchase price", it could be as little as 2.5 years, depending on the specific technology.
If you measure it as ERoEI, it's generally acknowledged by everyone except die-hard solar power advocates that the ratio of Energy Returned over Energy Input for solar is less than 1, unless you use very very recent strained Silicon-based technology, which barely hit break-even earlier this year.
If you use thin film technology the purchase price payback grows to 4 years, and the Payback ERoEI drops to about 0.8.
There's also the little problem of there being a shortage of polycrystaline Silicon, from which solar cells are made. This shortage is expected to last through at least 2008, since it takes about 3 years to build a manufacturing plant for it, and that's what would have to happen to reduce the cost overhead.
So for right now, any decision to switch to solar by Google is going to be an economic one, rather than an environmental one.
This makes sense, since Larry Page and Sergey Brin are invested in a Solar power startup, Nanosolar http://www.techreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17
Since Nanosolar is a thin-film photovoltaic shop, we are looking at a longer economic payback time; their output capacity after their plant is built will be 430MW of cells per year, so this will eaither be the first run cells, or it will be about a day and a half of cell output at their full production capacity.
FWIW, the 1.6MW capacity is going to put them at ~1/500th of the total US Solar capacity, which as of this year is at 927MW, for just this one installation. Comparatively, total US solar capacity is only 85% of the output of one of the two reactors at Diablo Canyon (1087MW each), while total US wind power capacity is 10,000MW and growing by 3,000MW in 2006 alone, according th AWEA (the American Wind Energy Association).
-- Terry
Wonder why no one on slashdot paid attention when MS moved to solar power in Mountain View a few months back?
Get back to me when they can generate 1.21 Giggawatts.. Until then, my Delorian stays in the garage.
serenity now!
Massive computer system? Check.
Independent network? Check-ish.
Solar powered? Check.
Super-human AI. ????
ALL HAIL OMNI-SUPER-GOOGLE-MIND-BRAIN!
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
"1.6 megawatts!?? 1.6 megawatts!?? Great Scott!!"
"What's a megawatt??"
Can't wait to see google headquarters on google earth. I'm sure they will all get a nice roof for their cars and their cars will be safe from heil :)) (not realy sure they have hail there)
Haven't you heard of sprinklers? They're used to deliver vast amounts of water over the Earth. And again, the sprinkler system is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your water in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of liquid, enormous amounts of water.
I would expect a company of Google's technical stature to do something a little more interesting. Like creating an artifical black hole and using its rotation to generate electricity. Or maybe deploy a device that harvests electricity from the keystrokes of all the people using their services... Solar! Bah!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
use the suns heat to heat air which drives turbine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_tower
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Now all Google need is one of those machines that makes water out of thin (yes thin as in desert thin) air that the US military have.
Oh...Solar PANELs....I thought they'd just BOUGHT the Sun. Then call it Google Sun. Then release a beta version of it.
In money terms - probably with the price of Californian electricity - probably 10 to 20 years (depending on how much the solar panels cost, presuming they are monocrystalline PV panels). It depends on how much of a bulk discount Google will have got for buying the number of panels they did.
In terms of energy, it takes about 6 years for a typical monocrystalline panel to make as much energy as it took to make the panel.
Most panels are guaranteed for 25 years, but should last a good bit longer, although they tend to lose efficiency as they age. They should still put out at least 80% of rated power at 25 years old.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Why don't they also install a generator to make the remaining power they use?
By having it on Campus they can be sure its reliable and clean.
They can select the tech they want to use.
"Microsoft already has solar power on its campus.
Something seems odd about installing solar panels in a city famous for grey overcast skies, but the panels work nonetheless. "
Solar power in Washington, like Windows, does work. Just not very well.
Need Mercedes parts ?
As a general rule of thumb, in a place with weather like San Jose, the amount of power you can get from covering a building won't even be enough to power the air conditioning unit during the afternoon. Not to mention all those dozens of computers Google is rumored to have, and free food that won't just cook itself.
This might be an earnest attempt to do something good, but it has devolved into a shameless publicity stunt. Google isn't the first company to use solar power for their office buildings, but they're the first to get onto the front page for it.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
So 1 home needs 1.6kW of electricity?
Don't people in California have airconditioning?
The smallest contract my electricity company (EDF) will sell is 3kW, and nobody uses that 'cos your main circuit breaker would blow if you turned on a couple of electric heaters and a microwave.
As far as I can remember I've got an 18kW contract, so this thing would be able to power around 100 people like me.
(Personaly I'll stick with my nice PWR thankyou).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Now your average square yard (or square meter, close enuf) solar panel can, if at right angles to the Sun, on a clear day, can put out maybe 160 watts.
So they could be planning on having 1,600,000 / 160, or ten thousand solar panels.
That's a pretty big number.
Now let's see if this is cost effective in any way:
Let's say they can get a quantity discount and can bargain the price down to, say, $1,000 each. (Current prices, with installation, are somewhere around $4,500, so we're being generous).
And let's also assume all the ancillary folderol of DC to AC converters costs only another 20% (probably closer to 40% in real life).
So we're talking about $1,200 per panel, $120,000,000 for the whole shebang. Chump change for Google.
Actually, literally "chump Change".
Becuz those panels, over a 24-hour average, although they can peak out at 160 watts each, if you take into account unavoidable things like "night" and "clouds", the average power is closer to 15 to 30 watts.
Now scientists tell us there are about 8760 hours in a year. Thirty watts for a year is about 263,000 watt-hours, or lets round it up to 300 kilowatt-hours. Multiply it by the number of panels, and that's an impressive 3,000,000 kilowatt hours. At a rate of 10 cents each, they can save $300,000 a year. If we are extremely optimistic, and assume the panels will last 15 years, they will save $4,500,000 over their lifetime.
"Good for the environment", at a first glance. "Gives you warm and fuzzy feelings", for sure.
Of course, if you do the math, $120 million spent, a return of $4.5 mil, that's not so good if you're an accountant.
It's actually worse than that, as if you keep the $120 million in the bank, it will garner at least $54 million at just 3% interest, risk free, leaving $174 million in the bank. So Google will lose about $170 million on this project.
But if you are a STOCKHOLDER in the CORPORATION, you should be apalled. One Hundred Seventty Million Dollars down the drain. Your Money.
Even if energy prices QUADRUPLED over the next 15 years, they will still lose over $120 million. Yipes.
If I owned any Google stock, I'd be pissed.
what?
If noone rtfa, then what's the slashdot effect?
And that's best case, using real-world costs, like triple the cost per panel and double the cost for infrastructure, and oh, we ignored maintenance and labor and opportunity costs, it's an even worse deal for the stockholders.
"Investors poured billions of dollars in this company. Now we have to think up cool stuff to do with it."
Hello? Solar panels in the valley? I thought Google was smart until now -- gee, I hope it doesn't get FOGGY or anything there...
stuff |
On top of that, you can manufacture solar panel with power created by solar panels.
This is also what always bugs me about the nuclear debate; all the idiots claiming that it takes almost as much fossil fuels for mining/refining of nuclear fuel than it takes to turn the coal/gas/oil into electricity directly. Nobody seems to see that wouldn't be the case if you powered those operations by nuclear power itself...
...the rest harvested from human energy siphoned off of the blissfully ignorant Matrix-dwellers. Hurray for alternative energy! :)
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
Well I think it is a step in the right direction. We have to realize that the price of electricity will be rising and rising due to the effects of peak oil. Oil is running out in +/- 43 years so the price of oil will start rising and so will the price of electricity.
I think it is time to start looking at alternatives and Google starting this initiative to power their workplaces with solar power is a good thing in my opinion. I could only whish that more companies started to experiment with those kinds of things.
It would be ideal if in lets say 10 years all new offices should be equipped with there own alternative energy supply, think solar power, wind power,... It is not a thing of extremist save the world kind op people, it is a thing for modern corporations to protect their way of doing business for the future.
Regards, Johan Louwers.
It is amazing how many people here are stuck on the money factor (which has yet to be shown by them.. We don't know the numbers they got (remember, they have some investment in a solar firm.. so its not like they are paying retail for this I'm sure). People, google is doing this for three reasons if you ask me:
1: It goes with their motto. (Do no evil)
2: It gives them a proving ground for their solar investment and on a fairly large scale. (and on this topic, don't you think their investment might have paid off with some R&D to make solar panels more efficent? I mean they don't invest just for the sake of investing).
3: It saves them some money for the long term use of their data centers.
Also, remember I doubt seriously that they are going to switch over completely to solar power.. I suspect its more like redundancy power "Sun's on full?.. then dial down the Grid (not off)... Clouds are out, then crank it up to 11").
Give them the benefit of the doubt to see how this plays out. But lets not throw stones when all we know is one small piece of the puzzle. For all we know, it may pay off... I personally suspect it will (not to the extent that they might believe but succeed it will). But I'm content to let it ride a little before we start throwing stones.
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
"Google Uses Humans for Bio-Energy." First human farm to power server farm by Google. Sergey Brin changes his name to Sergey Smith and wants everyone to start calling him by his last name.
Can I bum a sig?
Pff... you'd need more than 700 of them just to power a DeLorean
Slashdot: news for Apple. Stuff that Apple.
Ooops, my first calculations were a bit loopy, here's a better one, taking into account solar panel degradation, tolerances, heat factors, ACTUAL california electricity costs, now and projected, real compounded interest costs, costs of servicing and installation. Mostly concervative and real-world numbers. Still, they're losing many tens of millions-- the income from avoided electricity is barely 5% of the losses. Actually, the numbers are much worse than this-- solar power is unreliable, and most utilities charge considerably more, like twice as much, for unscheduled power. That power has to be bought on the fly, on the spot market, or requires the starting up of gas powered generators, which are very pricey to run. I couldnt figure out how to calculate this, but obviously it would only make the numbers worse. Spreadsheeet summary: panel 160 watts price $1,300.00 retail discount 40% quantity and wholesale discounts net $780.00 cost per panel watt discount 5% allowable tolerance raw watts 152 degradation 10% spec degradation over time avg degra 5% raw watts 144.4 night factor 0 oops, done later raw watts 144.4 diode factor 97% schottky series diode loss raw watrs 139.6267778 angle factor 3% loss due to sun angle delta during year raw watts 135.4379744 sun hrs 5.5 avg Socal sun hours per day sun factor 23% raw watts 31.03786914 avail 95% panel availability raw 29.48597569 panel failure rate 5% per year time to replace panel 1 hour panels failing per year 500 wiring 2% wiring losses raw watts 28.89625617 inverter eff 90% Dc to AC converter efficiency raw watts 26.00663056 hrs 8766 hours in a year watt hrs/pan 227974.1234 watt hours to load kwh 227.9741234 kilowatt hours to load cur elec cost $0.03 current socal kwh price inflation 4 Assumption of inflation in 15 years fut elec $0.11 final elec cost avg elec $0.06 average cost over years elect $ $12.77 avoided cost per panel per year watts out 1,600,000.00 target watts out gross panels 10000 computed $/yr saved $127,665.51 cost panels $7,800,000.00 inst cost 10% installation equip 20% wiring, inverters, etc tot cost $10,140,000.00 total cost of all equipment yrs 15 years of service panels/person 100 number of panels per service person persons 100 computed pay $20,000.00 pay per service person per year (LOW) pay/yr $2,000,000.00 total pay yrs tot 15 pay $ $30,000,000.00 total payroll over the years system cost $40,140,000.00 equipment plus payroll lost interest 3.5% interest possible in low-risk investments TOT SYS COST $67,803,187.28 cost plus lost interest Income $1,914,982.64 from avoided electricity costs Tot loss $65,888,204.64 $67,803,187.28 .
Oh good that's a big relief. I was thinking when the google system became self-aware it was going to launch a massive nuclear attack in its first phase in taking over the world.
hmm lets see 50% to run the computers and 50% to run the a/c to move the heat away ;-)
Solar panels give DC right? A datacentre will convert AC to DC, pump it into the UPS batteries, then convert it back to AC to power the servers. If you hook the panels directly onto the batteries, you would save the cost of an AC converter, plus the running cost of conversion losses. Has anybody tried this?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
It should not take too long for it to pay for itself. If you generate excess electricity your meter actually goes backwards, and the electricity company may pay you for the electricity you have put back on the grid, plus you get nice big tax breaks too!
I got it, AC. Very cute.
Others: AC is making a joke about that Al Gore & the penguins video that tried to discredit his global warming film by pointing out that Al Gore's airplane uses a lot of gas.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I was gonna say just that, that energy storage is the bigger issue than production, especially with wind and solar power, that are intermittent, though solar delivers energy while the people are at work, and when it gets dark, people go home, but still, you need keep the buidlings lit in the dark, or do you? Anyway, I think their solar panels will just be grid-tied, and not much local storage will be implemented, besides some backup power supplies and, guess what, generators that burn gas. And by the way I don't think supercapacitors can store that much energy, their advantage is burst load, they deliver fast, but limited capacity, and using it in say, a car, I'm guessing you'd probably get a less than 10 mile range with the top of the line supercapacitors, as opposed to 150 miles with heavy lead acid batteries that make the car sink through the asphalt, and 300 miles with conventional hydrocarbon storage that keeps the car light.
They're not the first to use solar power. Fedex installed soloar panels a year or two ago. Other companies are doing it too.. In fact, there was a Modern Marvels show on the History Channel about alternative energy. They said the US could receive ALL of its power requirements, and then some, if the SW Nevada desert was one big solar panel (or Wind farm). Thats pretty impressive for a renewable resource.
There was also mention on that episode of a new "solar paint", using nanotech, that the scientists envision painting buildings with, so the buildings can be self powered and only on the grid for backup power. Neat stuff.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
IIRC, current tech is about 1/10 capacity of batteries. But there is new tech afoot that appears to put the capacity at 1/2 to 1/1 with batteries. In addition, according to some of what you read about EEstor and the MIT tech, the capacitor loses something like 1-1.5% a day. Well, if we can do that currently, what can we do in 5 years if research is pushed?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
IT2I2 "It Thinks Therefore It Is"
Judging by that satellite shot google is turning into the next Mr Burns.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_shot_mr_burns)
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Apparently you have no concept of how resilient bird droppings can be. They'll need to catch it while it's wet. Like automatic windshield wipers.
This is a HIGH TECH company we're talking about. Who's going to get out of their aeron chairs and leave their grape-feeding brazillian fan-women behind to go on the roof and scrape bird shit?
This is what the not-operator is for.
No bird shit?
-"Bird Shit"
simple as that.
No bird shit or tree sap?
-"Bird Shit"|"Tree Sap"
See how easy it is?
What, exactly, do you think those server farms do all day?
I think a "..duh.." is in order here.
In The Matrix, the computers used a cheap form of fusion for energy; what they were keeping humans in jars for was the subconscious processing power of human brains. You've probably got a copy of the movie which, like mine, inexplicably skips ahead when Morpheus is explaining all this; but trust me, that's the only way the plot could go which could make thermodynamic sense.
Man, The Matrix was the best sci-fi movie ever, without a single gaping flaw. I hope they make a sequel someday.
The other posts have done a good job pointing out some of the fallacies and mistakes in the calculations, but I'll throw in a factor I haven't see considered yet--the value of earned media. It's actually kind of tough to put a value on it because you can't buy it, but it's worth more per column inch than an advertisement because it carries a third party "trusted source" imprimature.
I'd guess that national press coverage of this initiative is likely to generate enough earned media value to cover losses into the tens of millions on the technology. For perspective consider that almost all of Google's current (very valuable) brand awareness is the result of earned media.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
on skynet anymore
I applaud Google for taking these steps, but reading between the lines here's another way to look at this:
From the article: The solar array will be "... capable of generating 1.6 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 1,000 California homes" however, "the company will rely on solar power to supply nearly a third of the electricity consumed by office workers at its roughly one-million-square-foot headquarters" (emphasis added).
The way I read that, the Google campus uses over 4.8 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power over 3,000 California homes, just for the offices, excluding the server farms and data centres.
Alternate energy sources are great and I'm all for them, but the only long term solution is to be smarter about energy use and use less of it. For example, I've recently replaced my home PC with one using a Pentium M motherboard and cut my PC power consumption in half. Similarly, turning off devices instead of putting them on standby, and taking other measures such as replacing lightbulbs with low-energy bulbs all helps reduce my personal energy consumption.
In a business context, how about turning off office lights at night or going for motion sensor solutions so you aren't lighting empty space? Encouraging employees to turn off workstations overnight, etc. I've no idea if Google does something along these lines already, this isn't an attack on them.
My 2 cents.
Great sig... made me laugh!
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
they are NOT using it with their data centers.
RTFA
"A Google executive said the company will rely on solar power to supply nearly a third of the electricity consumed by office workers at its roughly one-million-square-foot headquarters. This does not include power consumed by data centers that power many of Google's Web services worldwide, he said."
so which uses more power, the data centers, or the 1/3 of the office workers at one (1) location?
Huh? Why not a roomba?
and have seen the solar panels. They're not the usual solar panels that are just sheets of photovoltaic cells. The set up basically can be done anywhere, with a flat roof, with reflective mirrors, etc. The power, to actually make the mirrors move is very small, with 2 total motors to rotate the mirrors.
The entire building is supposedly off the grid, and the price is relatively low to actually produce. I won't reveal how bloody cheap it is, but it is really is insanely cheap to produce. I thought it was a great idea, but to be honest, unless it's hidden away (like on the roof), it is quite ugly to look at.
If Bird shit is left on glass for an extended period of time, it'll actually start to corrode. I discovered this fact by buying an old car, and trying to clean it. One of the side windows has an etched in streak where the shit was.
It's a Gridtie Inverter system.
- design-tools/index.html
The point of these systems is to be able to provide some of the power that a building needs. NOT ALL OF IT!
More importantly, the peark Solar power is available when the Utility companies need it most -- when it's bright and sunny outside and the air conditioning load is hammering the utility grid. That's when the power companies need to buy 'peak power' from outside of California. And peak power costs butt loads of cash. Sometimes 10 to 15 times more than 'non-peak' power.
Here's a link to the real time power consumption for the state of California. Click on the graph for lots of details,
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html
At the worst, the red line will peak at over 54 Gigawatts.
Here's a real time display of a working solar power system used by a business, http://www.fatspaniel.com/datapage.html
Google's system will be the same, just bigger.
Let's stop all this silliness about 'running the office on Solar' and 'DC Powered Offices'.
The Solar panels make DC. The panels get connected in series until the voltage from the panels adds up to about 600 VDC. These structures are called 'Strings'.
Strings get connected in parallel to Inverters. Inverters convert the DC into AC.
If you want to play with an online system for configuring strings, go here, http://www.sma-america.com/solar-technology/solar
The outputs of the Inverters are connected into the building's electrical system.
The main power for the building comes from the utility company.
The Inverters will try to deliver as much power as they can to the power system in the building. Any 'extra' power is delivered back into the utility grid. Google gets a credit for what get's delivered to the gird. That credit reduces their monthly energy bill.
It would be insanely expensive to try to convert an office to DC.
Also, Solar panels won't be able to provide power during all of their business hours -- and it's simply not economically viable to build a battery system to store the energy and recover it later.
Interns, my friend... interns.
This gives a whole new meaning to a "rainy day in hell."
I took a little 6 inch plastic propellor and a tiny electric motor and tried to see whether I can make a AAA battery charger for my MP3 player. What I found so far, is that in a stiff breeze on the outside deck, I can coax about 200mV out of the motor. That isn't enough to overcome the forward voltage drop of a single diode, so I'm kinda stuck still. To make by AAA charger and do my good for humanity, I'll need a surprizingly large fan so i can turn a bigger motor, or I'll have to wind my own alternator.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
it just takes one helluva long time to renew.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Some of your estimates are just plain wrong.
;-)
175 Watt panel for $810/each
If I can buy that, I'm sure Google can get a cheaper price.
Most PV panels are warrantied for 25 years. That is, they are gauranteed to produce >90% rated peak power for 25 years. Typical total lifespan is about 40 years (with output dropping to ~80% peak).
PV systems require virtually no maintenance. Think window washers. 100 service people? that's just silly. maybe 1 person full-time, more likely contracted as needed a couple times a year.
at least do a little research on your numbers
Let's try this with some more accurate numbers.
180 Watt Solar Panels ($880 each)
That's 8,888 180 Watt panels to get to 1.6MW peak.
Total cost for the panels: $7,821,440. Now, let's say for spending that much money google is able to negotiate a modest 5% discount to bring the cost per panel with discount down to: $7,430,368.
I'm going to stick with the above assumption that wiring and converters at this level will come in around 20% of the cost. Which is $1,486,073.
Now let's assume they can get the whole thing installed at a price of $500 per panel on average. That's $4,444,400.
There, my total cost for installation is now: $13,360,441.
It's hard to estimate how many watts per day one of the 180 watt panels will produce because it depends a lot on local weather patterns and how they're positioned. But over a 24hour/365 day period I'm going to go ahead and assume an average hourly production ballpark figure of 25 watts per panel. So that's 25 watts x 8,888 panels: 222.2KW hours. Multiply it by 8,760 hours in a year: 1,946,472 KW hours/year.
The best I could find for electric rates is Sacramento at $0.111/kwh.
At that rate, google will save $216,058/year.
Solar panels last much longer than 15 years. Here's a company that claims a lifespan of 30+ years and they have a 25 year warranty. Here's a guy who talks about a 21 year old panel still producing at near it's peak rating.
From personal experience I can say many older panels lose some efficiency and after 12-15 years their output drops to ~80% of the their original peak output. But let's assume the gradual loss of output will coincide with a gradual increase in the grid power price, offsetting each other.
So let's say a 30 year life, $216,058/year comes to $6,481,740. Subtract that from the installation costs and you get: $-6,878,701. Not nearly the $120M loss you estimate.
Now, if prices did, in fact, quadruple (which over a 30 year period isn't only unheard of, but likely) the numbers get ever closer to a net of zero. Not to mention the publicity google gains from this and the mitigation of risk by not leaving themselves susceptable to rising energy prices. And who knows, the panels may last 40 years.
Either way, it's not the giant boondoggle you make it out to be.
I would have expected them to use it to power their office building. How many servers could it power?
Squirrel!
Steve Ballmer, under their "no giant computer company left behind" policy announced MicroSoft's new 'me-too' power generation program using coal. Steve said "we felt this initiative reflects MicroSoft's state of innovation and reliability".
You're also presuming that the price of the electricity doesn't increase. That strikes me as a bad bet.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There are some valid concerns about the embedded impacts of solar (energy to produce the panels, impacts from mining raw materials, etc.) But the energy balance is positive after several years, and depending on which policy environment you are under (tax incentives, etc.) the monetary payback can be as little as 7-10 years (especially in California, where the peak load the solar power is displacing regularly costs over 12 cents per kilowatt hour). And the main raw material is the same highly purified silicon used to make the chips in your computer. This is not simply the idealistic extravagence of nerds with cash. This is a replicable project that makes business sense, and has positive environmental impacts. The Washington Post has a pretty good article, as well as a link to an updated 3D rendering of the GooglePlex (with its significant roof space) in Google Earth: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/10/16/AR2006101601474.html
I wouldn't be surprised in the months to come if you here more re: the data centers. 1.21Gw?... Great Scott!
The Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus already is solar powered.
Google engineers have calculated that the increased cost of hiring people to clean shat-on solar panels will increase the break-even time from 7.5 to 130 years and have thus decided to cancel the project.
Gee, I thought it was a Simpsons reference. :)
www.joshferguson.org
Is google being run by an artificial intelligence?
Actually, I thought Ballmer's announcement was that they'd thrown chairs through all the windows at microsoft's campus, thereby increasing the natural, "air-conditioning," in their offices,. . .
You left out the most important part of CA granola.
The fruits don't do anything but spread AIDS.
The nuts run the government.
But the flakes run silicon valley.
Which is most important?
>Some of your estimates are just plain wrong.
>175 Watt panel for $810/each
>If I can buy that, I'm sure Google can get a cheaper price.
Are you sure a company that can undercutr everybody else will: (1) Make panels that will last xx years? (2) Still be in business in XX years? (3) Even if in business, will honor the warranty?
>Most PV panels are warrantied for 25 years. That is, they are gauranteed to produce >90% rated peak power for 25 years. Typical >total lifespan is about 40 years (with output dropping to ~80% peak).
Since nobody's actually run them for that long, especially the newer panels, I dont want to bet on it. Look at the poor extrapolated reliability of: Space Shuttle, B-52, C-141, C5A's wings, Firestone 721 radials, my water heater, my mother-in-law's roof, most disk drives, etc, etc, etc.... I don't trust any extrapolated estimate as they ALL seem to be way optimistic.
>PV systems require virtually no maintenance. Think window washers. 100 service people? that's just silly. maybe 1 person full-time, more likely contracted as needed a couple times a year.
Ever run a data center with 100UPS's? Inverters and batteries fail. Solder joints fail. Panels fail. Hail strikes. I wild-guessed it at 5 minutes maintenance per panel per day. Try to get off LA smog or SF salt spray off a panel, without streaks or scratches, in less than two minutes. Maybe 5 minutes is a bit high, but even if you plug in much lower numbers for maintenance, the net result is still very bad.
Has anyone else noticed the HILARIOUS coincidence, in that there's a company called Sun Microcomputers???
If I were funnier, I would make a joke and post the joke on Slashdot!!
My exact words were: 3: It saves them some money for the long term use of their data centers.
If you are reducing costs of your total operation (office space), and your office space by definition (google's) is somewhat modular, and your bread and butter, as it were, are your data centers, any costs you can shave to bring more of them online is important. I did not say, it saves money ON the data centers, I said it saves money ON the long term use of their data centers. Subtle difference, but distinct.. so please do not issue RTFA's to me.
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
I love They Might Be Giants, but actually, they didn't write the song, they just covered it. Lou Singer and Hy Zaret did, in 1959.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
bitch