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Google's Addiction to Cheap Electricity
Googling Yourself writes "Harpers magazine has published a blueprint of Google's new data center at The Dalles, Oregon where they will be tapping into some of the cheapest electricity in North America. Although the plans show three 68,680-square-foot storage buildings, only two of the buildings have been constructed so far. Based on a projected industry standard of 500 watts per square foot, the Dalles plant can be expected to use 103 megawatts of electricity. Google's server farm represents a new phase in the transformation of the Columbia River over the past half-century. Across the street from the Google data center is an example the last generation of high energy consumers; Microsoft, Yahoo, and Ask.com are also planning data centers on the Columbia River."
americans seem to have.
While visiting the hoover dam, there also was talk about "cheap electricity" for people in the vincinity.
isnt it uneconomical to sell it cheap if its more worth somewhere else?
With 320 kV lines, you could transmit electricity across the united states with losing 20%, at most. And to reach states with much higher electricity prices, you could stay within single digit percentages of loss.
So why sell it for cheap? its not like the capacities are unlimited...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
They should build a data center here in New York State's North Country. We have cheap and plentiful water power, plus its cold enough in the winter that cooling the data center is simple: just open a window.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
50 years ago the Columbia river gorge was filled by the aluminum industry looking for cheap electricity to run their furnaces.
I guess Internet servers are the new fires of industry.
And before I get modded down: how exactly is Google supposed to get the power to run not just the servers, but the cooling, network switches, and other hardware that will keep it from the equivalent of being Slashdotted?
Considering that Google is one of the top sites on the Internet, I frankly have no problem with this, considering there aren't any viable solutions to produce power of that magnitude (though it'll be interesting if Google eventually just builds its own power plant -- GoogleVolts FTW!); and after all, they've got shareholders to look after...gotta keep the company profitable. Google (and the other companies on that will be on that river) will probably donate some of its funds to carbon offsets to shut everybody up and get good PR at the same time.
This taxpayer says "better the funds go to Google (or other companies) rather than to a pointless war."
But I don't live in the town in question, so what I say is moot. But don't complain to Google...complain to the city for pimping themselves out to get the corps to build there. We've been down this road hundreds of times across the country with Wal-Mart.
And as an aside, I'm a little loath to quote that Harper's article as gospel considering that the server count in the article went from "1,000s" to "a thousand times more?! With no source?! I have to call shenanigans on that hand-waving, sorry.
(Full disclosure: I have a GMail account. But I would say the above if this was say, Wikipedia that's using that power.)
TFA addresses much larger issues than shopping for cheap electricity. It's about how the Internet companies require vastly more energy to run than most people realize, and how taxpayers are footing the bill for a lot of it. Sadly, that "three-word smartass comment" is right.
Go look into the politics behind any major construction project & you'll see tax breaks & special treatment.
The exact same thing is going on in Washington State
Or just ask your local sports nut about the tax breaks that go into building sports stadiums.
Taxpayers footing part of the bill is business as usual.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Just out of curiosity, what kind of pollution do you expect a data center to produce?
It's also interesting that Google is looking at building a data center in Lithuania, where 78% of the power comes from nuclear power plants. Maybe if the US had more power available from less expensive (non-fossil fuel) sources,
BTW NYT has an article about nuclear waste costs that rely on the taxpayer pocket.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/us/17nuke.html
Not really. Mainframes do batch processing of predetermined non-interactive workloads best. Google does interactive database searches with a fraction of a second latency, serves up web ads, and is trying to host traditional desktop applications via a web browser.
Mainframes have really puny CPU horsepower relative to their size, cost and power consumption. Their OSes are tuned for batch processing. Almost every compromise in mainframe design is decided in favor of uptime and transactional integrity, things for which Google has almost no use at all. They would be throwing a lot of money at solving issues they don't have if they ran mainframes, and even if they did manage to buy enough mainframes to handle their particular workload, it would probably end up using more power than they're using now.
At The Dalles is one of the many dams along the Columbia River that supply all that electricity. But before the dam was completed in 1957, it had been one of the most important places in North America for the indigenous people. On March 10, 1957, hundreds of observers looked on as a rising Lake Celilo rapidly silenced the falls, submerged fishing platforms, and consumed the village of Celilo, ending an age-old existence for those who lived there.
I don't mind the inbound people as much as their attitudes in the non-summer seasons. I live in Oregon *because* I love the weather and environment year-round. Sucks every time I hear some whiner complain about how much they hate "days like this" if it's not 65 and sunny.
They should do this. ;)
Funny that, I was looking at the US per-state GDP just last night.
Oregon is a nice place. I was through Portland many years ago after biking from Port Angeles around the mountainous backside of Washington, then back inland along the Columbia River through to Portland (elevation 60 feet IIRC) where we visited Peter Norton's alma mater, the west again to the Oregon coast along the Van Duzer corridor, a rather wussy pass through the Rockies as these things go, but we happened to buck the headwind of all time. On a Ferry, I would have been looking for spray. One of those days where you crest a false flat, then gear *down* for the descent.
Portland reminded me of Vancouver, minus East Hastings, but also minus the international food scene. Mother-earth Birkenstocks, check. Birkenstocks with purple daisies, check. Birkenstocks with bike cleats, check. What's not to like?
Let's take a GDP stroll mostly along the Appalachians, the one region of the US I've never visited (unless you count Pittsburgh).
44 Kentucky 29,842
45 Alabama 29,697
46 South Carolina 29,642
47 Oklahoma 29,545
48 Montana 27,942
49 Arkansas 27,875
50 West Virginia 24,748
51 Mississippi 24,062
The only reason Oregon looks bad by any measure is having done so little with so much. Reminiscent of the Hudson's Bay Company, the oldest commercial corporation in North America. Sold off more assets than Rockefeller and Carnegie combined (fur trade, oil and gas, trans-continental railway rights, etc.) but always kept its eye on the prize: $10 dress shirts. With a competent management team, a business plan, a vast supply-chain infrastructure, a will to succeed, a grasp on reality, and lots of immigrant labour, it could have been Walmart. Who knew?
If you want a cheap cooling bill at the site of massive Hydro infrastructure, check out Cold and colder.
Kitimat would need undersea cables tapping into the Pacific grid, but if you wanted your data center to resemble Cheyenne Mountain, that could be arranged. In Sept-Iles you would enjoy the language laws and two layers of Federal government. In both locations you would enjoy Canadian privacy laws we have passed, and the DMCA we haven't yet passed. 30 annual days with a high above 20 degrees C (68 F). 100MW there would barely ripple the meters.
You'd end up with higher latencies, and less routing redundancy. The ports and heavy infrastructure would be world class, but you might also discover that Fedex doesn't guarantee same week delivery for six months out of the year.
The one concession I would have demanded from Google at Dulles is an Enron-esque contract to shed load during a grid crisis. Should be no problem for Google to design the data center to shed load a a MW/minute for half an hour. The spiders, for example, can tolerate a little downtime. Plus Google has the capacity to load-balance globally.
Not many people realize this, but the phone companies in the 1970s routinely routed long distance calls from Boston to Tampa through western time zone
In the province of Quebec in Canada, there's the state owned company Hydro-Quebec (world largest hydro electricity producer) that sells the cheapest electricity in north america. Quebec seems an ideal place for this kind of installations.
-lots of qualified staff here also, IT industry is one of Quebec top industries
-Most IT staff are bilingual, so language is not that much a problem.
-cold temp (about -10 to -30 during the winter) mean less energy compsumtion to lower the servers temp.
-Lowest companies taxes than most US states (one of the highest individual taxes however)
Will Alcan just been sold to RioTinto and probably soon rationalising is activities in QC, they're should be some great deals available.
We have a family business that can't be passed on directly to the children and grandchildren without an enormous tax burden, or hamstringing ourselves with a lot of irrevocable trusts.
Hey, that's how the rich do it. Also, the first 1.5M is exempt. Would you prefer we have landed gentry?
Capital gains taxes are clearly a double-tax in addition to income taxes... I don't consider myself rich, merely middle class, but I do own stock. So I am already paying corporate income tax out of my dividends.
No, you pay income tax on your dividends and capital gains on stock gains.
Unforutnately, moving an established family business away from Chicago is not an option.
Estate tax isn't a Chicago thing.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"