A Server Farm Powered By a Wind Farm

1sockchuck writes "A Texas startup called Baryonyx plans to build data centers powered entirely by renewable energy. Its first project will be a wind-powered server farm powered by 100 wind turbines in the Texas panhandle. The company has also leased 38,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico, where it hopes to build hundreds of 300-foot wind turbines that can each generate up to 5 megawatts of power to support additional facilities. Baryonyx plans to sell excess capacity to the local utility, which it will use as a backup when the wind dies down."

Comments

Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

*Hundreds* of 300ft wind farms to power a data center? Holy sustainability problems Batman!

Re:Umm...

[HalifaxRage]

You know I could have sworn someone was trying to sell a few hundred giant turbines here a few days back...

Re:Umm...

[tthomas48]

I think that, yes, our modern lifestyle is excessive. But this is happening with coal too. You just don't appear to live in a state where it's extracted, nor downwind of where the plants are releasing pollutants. Texas has a LOT of land that's not particularly good for animals, humans or plants over about 3 feet tall, and is perfect for wind farms.

Re:Umm...

[MeatBag PussRocket]

Texas has a LOT of land that's not particularly good for animals, humans or plants over about 3 feet tall, and is perfect for wind farms.

Well, that's easy for you to say. Do you share the same opinions about the landscape of the arctic wildlife preserves?

theres a big difference between the artic wildlife preserves and the texas panhandle, BIG. obviously theclimate, but only _slightly_ less obvious is the wildlife diversity / scarcity. theres not a lot of wildlife that lives specifically in that area at all, much less endangered species. There are few Raptors that live in that area as well, furthermore the Energy Center of Wisconsin claims that Cell Phone Towers kill far more birds annually. i guess we should stop using them too, huh?

Those wind farms really scar the countryside, and the maintenance roads that link them further destroys the ecosystems you so readily condemn. Don't forget about the intra-farm transmission lines and support structures. These things destroy hundreds of square miles to produce the power of one natural gas power station. Of course, it's on somebody else's land, though, isn't it? I guess there's no price some people are not willing for someone else to pay.
 

In open, flat terrain, a utility-scale wind plant will require about 60 acres per megawatt of installed capacity. However, only 5% (3 acres) or less of this area is actually occupied by turbines, access roads, and other equipment--95% remains free for other compatible uses such as farming or ranching. But lets not limit our view to land use, since you mentioned the alternative of natural gas, lets look at some of the resources that requires in comparison
according to the American Wind Energy Association [awea.org] (i know, probably a somewhat biased source, but hey, its _a_ source, all i saw in your post was youtube, which i dont consider a source for things like _facts_ and _data_) a combined cycle gas plant requires approx .25 gal\kWh produced, a wind plant requires .001 gal\kWh, again i ask, have you been to Texas? its not exactly drowning in water, except for the Gulf Coast, but thats several hundred miles away, should we truck the water in or lay pipelines for a gas plant? i'm sure the impacts of that would be minimal.

And funny that coal was mentioned, because it is the most favored fuel under the new "green energy" bill passed by the US House of Representatives. It is going to be massively subsidized for decades to come, while the cleanest fuel (natural gas) is the most punished -- both in power generation and industry. But, hey, who cares if "green energy" as portrayed in the popular press works or not... it's _GREEN_, and these wind farms go to ELEVEN!

ummm... the the US house of representatives? the same US house of representatives that is considered to be the 7th most corrupt on the planet by Transparency Internationals 2009 Global Corruption Barometer? http://www.transparency.org/ you _really_ want to trust that they're looking out for _your_ interests? wait, are you an Oil Barron, or a major Pharmaceutical manufacturer, or a Multinational Conglomerate or a failing bank? if so, these just might be your guys.

Re:Umm...

[Jeremi]

Those wind farms really scar the countryside [...] These things destroy hundreds of square miles

What damage, precisely, is done to the countryside? Other than the tweaking of some peoples' overly-developed sense of aesthetics, and a few access roads and power lines, I don't see much damage being done. It's certainly a lot easier on the enviroment than mining, oil drilling, or hydro would be, and it has the added benefit of guaranteeing that no additional development will occur on the land, indefinitely -- i.e. once you've built your wind farm there, the chances of a city/freeway/landfill/etc being built on the same land are slim to none. For any plants/animals that can tolerate the presence of windmills (i.e. most of them), that's not a bad deal.

Re:Umm...

[amias]

excellent points , wind farms protect land and offer us the best compromise for getting power with low environmental impacts.

i for one find them enchantingly beautiful , monuments to both the intelligence and sensitivity of humans.

There are lots of designs beyond the big spinning blade models , you can use the vibration of taught threads and vertical rotating blades
(think spinning signs) so its possible to fit wind generation to lots of different sites.

the answer to the question of where to get our power is that there is not one answer but many little distributed answers :)

Toodle-pip
Amias

One small technical hurdle

[Anonymous Coward]

The current version has coal-fired blowers feeding into the wind farm.

Future versions promise to remove the coal-fired blowers.

Why not just use the grid?

[pete-classic]

"A Texas startup called Baryonyx plans to build data centers powered entirely by renewable energy. [... ] it will use [the local utility] as a backup when the wind dies down."

If it's powered of the grid when it isn't windy out, and it's powered entirely by renewable energy, wouldn't it be powered entirely by renewable energy if it used the grid all the time?

Or are they just trying to say that it's net-positive? Or what? The linked article doesn't seem to claim that the data center will be "powered entirely by renewable energy", so it isn't much help.

-Peter

Re:Why not just use the grid?

[bugnuts]

You calculate your average annual load, and scale your wind farm for that load. If you produce more, it goes into the grid for someone else to use. If you produce less, you draw from the grid and pay rip-off prices from the local power company. Basically you're using the power grid as a huge battery and hoping your numbers were close enough to produce what you draw.

It's better than just a net sum of zero. It's actually better when you use the produced energy yourself, because there is far less energy loss than if the power company sent it to you. Transmission losses for a short distance from the wind farm to you are much lower, assuming you don't skimp on the wiring, and any excess energy will be sent to downstream customers with less loss, too, especially if they make it a high voltage generating station (and I suspect they have to due to the size).

Re:Why not just use the grid?

[Red Flayer]

It's better than just a net sum of zero. It's actually better when you use the produced energy yourself, because there is far less energy loss than if the power company sent it to you. Transmission losses for a short distance from the wind farm to you are much lower, assuming you don't skimp on the wiring, and any excess energy will be sent to downstream customers with less loss, too, especially if they make it a high voltage generating station (and I suspect they have to due to the size).

From a cash standpoint, though... not sure it would be better.

Is it cheaper to build out your own power generation than it is to pay for the overhead and profits of the grid power suppliers? What are the efficiencies of scale in electricity generation? How does capital financing play into this -- would the utilities get much cheaper capital from the financiers?

I like the main idea of your post, though. Distributed (and sustainable/green) power generation with traditional power companies acting as a backup supplier would give a nice transition to a more sustainable generation system. Unfortunately, I think if that model were adopted widely, we'd lose one of the great efficiencies of centralized power generation -- predictable loads. The big power companies would need to shift to power supplies that have a quick response to increased demand (or they'd need to waste a lot of fuel maintaining higher base generation).

I'm by no means an expert in the industry, so I don't know tons about how it *could* play out, let alone how it *would* play out... but I do wonder how a grid-based backup supply could cope with highly variable demand.

Re:Why not just use the grid?

[aldousd666]

They'll have to invent a new HTTP error code: 603 - Calm Weather

Re:Car powered by a wind farm.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But does it run Wind River Linux?

wake up folks need more nuclear power!

[unix_geek_512]

We need more nuclear power.

Wind turbines are great and all, except for the fact they need tons of copper, aluminum, fiberglass and other resources which require a heck of a lot of energy to mine and produce.

All those resources are best used elsewhere, where it is more efficient.

Nothing beats nuclear power at providing base generating capacity.

Let's get some hydro in there too, hydro is a dirty word nowadays, which is insane. It's more green than all the "fashionable green technologies".

Give me an all of above approach please!!!

And don't forget we need to return to the moon and start mining Helium 3 now();

Re:wake up folks need more nuclear power!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Is wind really "free"? If we install enough wind turbines, wouldn't we slow the spin of the earth because of the collective resistance of the turbines?

Nope. Angular momentum is conserved. You'd just be modifying the distribution of it between the atmosphere and the ground's motion - and the planet is a LOT more massive than the atmosphere. (Also: In the temperate zone you'd SPEED UP the Earth by slowing the wind. But not by enough to measure.)

As for weather effects and the like: A wind farm has about as much effect as growing a forest or raising some skyscrapers. It's a drop in the bucket, atmospherically speaking.

Give me a call when they're powering the whole planet by using dirigible-borne wind turbines to slow the jet stream by a few percent. It might make a detectable difference in storm tracks.

59 Sq Miles for 1500 MW. Nuke Plant Better.

[Ron Bennett]

59 square miles of land to generate a theoretical maximum of 1500 megawatts (300 turbines x 5 MW each). But the reality is even with all 300 turbines running, assuming they all get built, the actual power output much of the time will be well below their rated maximum output. A nuclear power plant, in particular, those containing multiple reactor units, can easily produce well in excess of 1500 MW on a much smaller foot print than 59 square miles, and more consistently.

In my view, wind power is a fad. I'd wager in 20 years there will be a booming business in wind turbine demolition as it becomes painfully clear, even to many wind power advocates, that their efficiency is lousy and the ongoing maintenance, especially as the turbines age, far larger than inticipated; many will be glad to see the eyesores turn down. To digress, right now, wind turbines, in most places, are still a novelty and seem neat, but once they're everywhere, and especially as they age, aren't going to seem so nice anymore.

Solar, especially home and business installations on roofs, which basically unused space now, shows much promise - won't eliminate the need for the grid, but will reduce demand somewhat while saving people money.

Ron

Re:59 Sq Miles for 1500 MW. Nuke Plant Better.

[StickyWidget]

Nuclear power plants in the 1500 Megawatt range cost 30-40 Billion dollars just to build.

Wind Farms in the 1500 Megawatt range cost 300-400 million dollars to build.

Put in the zeros:
40,000,000,000 vs 400,000,000....

For the price of one 1500 Megawatt nuclear plant, we can build 100 1500 megawatt wind farms.... 1500 MW Care to revise your argument?

~Sticky

Re:59 Sq Miles for 1500 MW. Nuke Plant Better.

[Chris Burke]

A nuclear power plant, in particular, those containing multiple reactor units, can easily produce well in excess of 1500 MW on a much smaller foot print than 59 square miles, and more consistently.

Why is land area the primary criterion? Why talk about wind farm land 'foot print' as though it were a big parking lot you plop down, as if it occupies land in the same way a nuclear plant does. One of the nice things about wind farms is that at ground level they consist of mostly empty space which can be used for farming, animal grazing, and so on. If it even matters. Nobody cares about squeezing multiple uses out of every square mile in west Texas, for example. Unless it's to put wind mills where you already have oil wells, which I've seen. There's plenty of land besides that isn't being used for anything else.

In my view, wind power is a fad. I'd wager in 20 years there will be a booming business in wind turbine demolition as it becomes painfully clear, even to many wind power advocates, that their efficiency is lousy and the ongoing maintenance, especially as the turbines age, far larger than inticipated

If they're tearing it down in twenty years, then they'll only be doing it to put up a new one, because they would have long since made a profit on the windmill. The farms that were built ten years ago have already turned nice ROIs. Even without a lot of incentives, it's profitable to run them. Unexpected maintenance issues late in life aren't going to change that. Forget some Oil-and-would-be-water Baron in the panhandle; there's a reason they're throwing up all those wind farms in west Texas.

Now I could see development slowing down if they start to run out of economical places to put them. But why would they tear down farms in places that have already proven to be profitable?

many will be glad to see the eyesores turn down.

Ah. Wishful thinking. Sorry you feel that way. I think a wind farm looks beautiful, personally. Some older models aren't very good looking, sure. But all the new ones they're building look elegant to me, a modern take on an old pastoral theme, and seen a hundred of them all carving out big circles at slightly different speeds is mesmerizing.

Solar, especially home and business installations on roofs, which basically unused space now, shows much promise - won't eliminate the need for the grid, but will reduce demand somewhat while saving people money.

Yeah, that's nice too. Economies of scale help here though just like with everything else, so it's not always as clear for a homeowner that it's a good ROI, but in the right conditions it does very well. My house used to have solar panels on it, but they were removed due to maintenance issues and a bad installation that affected the roof. It's possible I'll new ones up at some point. Commercial rooftops, though, sound like a fantastic place for solar.

Re:59 Sq Miles for 1500 MW. Nuke Plant Better.

[uvdiv_blog]

Nuclear power plants in the 1500 Megawatt range cost 30-40 Billion dollars just to build.

Nonsense. The new French reactor, 1650 MWe, has a pricetag of $4.8 billion. Recent Japanese and Korean reactors were in the same range - $2-3/W (PPP), as surveyed by MIT CEEPR (under "update on the cost of nuclear power"). The accompanying study (2009) predicts costs for new US reactors to be $4/W. In short, the numbers are consistent. You can look up cost figures, levelized cost studies (here's a start) up and down, and you will find this is true.

Wind Farms in the 1500 Megawatt range cost 300-400 million dollars to build.

Also nonsense. Just take one recent UK wind farm, which came in at £111 M for 60 MWe - $2.07/W, or extrapolating, over $3 billion for 1500 MW. You can survey costs all over the web, and this is typical. Whitelee, Europe's largest onshore farm, cost £300M ($496M) for 322 MWe, $1.54/W. Lynn and Inner Dowsing - UK's largest offshore farm - came in at £300 M ($496 M) for 194 MWe, $2.56/MW. The famous London Array is now at £3B ($4.96 billion) for 1,000 MWe: $4.96/W. (To be fair though, this represents a 200% cost overrun over the original estimates.) (Sorry about the angstrom signs: they are supposed to be British "pound" symbols)

Also, besides the fact that your bogus figures for wind are 10 times cheaper than reality (and for nuclear, 10 times more expensive than reality), your comparison is bogus in yet another away. You comparable incomparable quantities: a megawatt of baseload yields far more energy than a megawatt of wind power - because it yields power continuously, whereas the wind turbines are very frequently down, or generating at fractional capacity. This is represented by the "capacity factor", which is the fraction of the nameplate capacity actually achieved by a power plant - ratio of [average power output]/[power capacity]. And while nuclear power plants, as generally reliable baseload plants, run at 90%+ capacity factor - that is, average 0.90 MWe of generation for each 1 MWe of nameplate capacity - wind farms, becuase of the obvious intermittency of wind, average only 20-30% capacity factors, with some exceptional offshore locations yielding 40%. Those megawatts are completely incomparable: 1 MWe of nuclear yields 2-4 times more energy than 1 MWe of wind power.

Re:59 Sq Miles for 1500 MW. Nuke Plant Better.

[shermo]

A type 1 wind site will get about 40% of maximum capacity on average. So a simple multiplier still puts wind farms a long way ahead on those numbers.

Of course there are other benefits to nuclear over wind and as the proportion of wind increases, the grid quickly becomes unstable. However at the current level of wind penetration that's not an issue, so wind farms are the better choice.

Re:59 Sq Miles for 1500 MW. Nuke Plant Better.

[StickyWidget]

Jeez. Where do I even start....
1. Don't reference Other Countries nuclear programs. This is the United States, where the costs of regulation, permitting, licensing, buying land, paying off neighbors, etc outweigh the material cost of a reactor. Don't compare France. Japan, Korea, or all those others, to the US, it's apples and oranges when it comes to nuclear acceptance. The issue was a wind farm in the US, not France. A nuke in America costs 30-40 billion dollars, stem to stern, full cost. That's the cost of a FULL COMPLETE nuke plant(including water treatment, balance of plant, turbines, etc), but I'll forgive your ignorance on that. People who read wikipedia and don't know power generation often make that mistake.

2. You got your numbers wrong: Financing referenced in that wikipedia article is only for construction phase, which is the CHEAPEST part of building a nuke. Permitting isn't there, startup (which is WAY expensive) isn't there, commissioning (which is RIDICULOUS expensive) isn't there, NRC approval and licensing (which is THE most expensive piece) isn't there. If you worked for a utility or in the nuclear industry (like me) you'd know this.

3. If you want to reference a source, use one with some TEETH. Something like http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/analysis/nuclearpower.html, or http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/82975.pdf. Some dipshit's blog doesn't count, especially when he admits a full bias and doesn't disclose his credentials. BTW: I'm a computer engineer with 5 years of experience in control systems, power generation, and the economics of electric power.

4. Seriously? OFFSHORE wind farm budget numbers up against LAND BASED wind farms? Lets' see, we'll put a wind technology that is designed, constructed, and operated in one of the most harsh environments on the planet, which you have to helicopter maintenance personnel into, against a wind technology that is built on solid ground, with standard materials, and can be maintained with guys in trucks. Gee, that's a real valid comparison. My wind numbers are accurate, I know because I work in the industry.

5. Fine. Assume that they produce 1500 MW 10% of the time instead of 90%. Still a break even with my ACCURATE numbers.

6. Definitely not an engineer. Megawatts are always comparable, they are absolute quantities. A MW produced by a wind farm is the same MW produced by a nuke. Yes, while wind provides a smaller percentage of it's capacity factor when compared to nuclear, that can be (supposedly) be defeated with large numbers of geographically dispersed wind farms.

Nukes cost a lot of money. That is the operational reality. Get over it. Until someone decides that nukes are a good investment for their cost, we will not see a nuke plant. Other countries can do what they like, they are 20 years ahead of us. The NRC rules all, and nobody wants to finance something we can't figure out how to get rid of the waste for. And that's sad, because nuclear power is the future of baseload generation and will help end our dependence on fossil fuels.

~Sticky

Re:59 Sq Miles for 1500 MW. Nuke Plant Better.

[johannesg]

I'd wager in 20 years there will be a booming business in wind turbine demolition as it becomes painfully clear, even to many wind power advocates, that their efficiency is lousy and the ongoing maintenance, especially as the turbines age, far larger than inticipated; many will be glad to see the eyesores turn down.

I live in the Netherlands, and I can tell you that windfarms can be turned into a thriving tourist business after a couple of centuries.

Re:59 Sq Miles for 1500 MW. Nuke Plant Better.

[uvdiv_blog]

Sigh.

1. Don't reference Other Countries nuclear programs. This is the United States,

My $4/W figure was the estimate for new United States reactors, according to the interdisciplinary MIT study The Future of Nuclear Power (the 2009 update).

Referring again to the MIT study, they explain in detail what goes into their cost models (the 2003 full report, appendix 5). It encompasses EVERYTHING - the entire plant (steam turbines and all), the operating costs over 40 years of operation, 40 years' worth of fuel, the decomissioning costs after those 40 years, the waste disposal cost under the current 0.1 c/kWh DoE fee, etc. The TOTAL cash flow is estimated at $4.5 billion (nominal) during the construction phase - see the supplemental paper Update on the Cost of Nuclear Power, table 6A (this doesn't include the financing costs - go down to 6C).

Of course, what's really interesting is the levelized lifetime cost, per kWh. The MIT study estimates this at 8.4 c/kWhe; I've surveyed a dozen other such levelized cost studies on my blog. Feel free to follow the links and read up on them.

By the way, the NRC fees a very tiny part of costs - currently $4.6 M/year, out of of the MIT estimate of $56 M/year of fixed O&M costs (for a 1 GW plant).

6. Definitely not an engineer. Megawatts are always comparable, they are absolute quantities. A MW produced by a wind farm is the same MW produced by a nuke.

Nameplate capacities are incomparable. They represent peak power generation; but some power plants always operate at full power, and others operate intermittently, hence the energy yields (integral of power * dt) are completely different.

Yes, while wind provides a smaller percentage of it's capacity factor when compared to nuclear, that can be (supposedly) be defeated with large numbers of geographically dispersed wind farms.

No, that's a fallacy. 1 MWe of wind (nameplate capacity), at 30% capacity factor, averages 300 kWe (averaged over long time periods), with an instantaneous range of 0-1000 kWe. Adding together a thousand such (identical, independent) turbines gives you an average of 300 MWe, albeit with lower statistical variance - smaller fluctuations.

You are conflating two separate issues. One, is that the average output of a windfarm is a fraction of its nameplate capacity. Two, is that the output over time has very large variations. See? They are separate problems.

Re:59 Sq Miles for 1500 MW. Nuke Plant Better.

[risom]

The nuke will actually put out 1500MW consistently regardless of weather conditions

Theoretically - mostly yes. I don't know nothing about the environmental laws in the USA, but in Germany there are laws allowing only a specific maximum of thermal energy to be diverted into the nearby rivers - so in a hot summer the nukes can only operate at 30% or even less (like in 2006) - source)

Practically they are down quite often. They can only operate 92% of the time for maintenance reasons (same source). And even after maintenance they fail quite often. From the 17 or so nuclear plants in Germany at least one is down for security reasons at every given time. So even without a warm summer they are up at most ~85%, with a hot summer perhaps only ~75%.

So with an average uptime of about 80% and the 40% average capacity of wind farms stated by shermo nukes are still fifty times(!) more expensive than wind farms.

green marketing gimmick

[Necron69]

"Baryonyx plans to sell excess capacity to the local utility, which it will use as a backup when the wind dies down."

Translation: the local utility will need to build/buy additional generating capacity to cover the lack of base-load power from the wind farm.

This is a gimmick that isn't near as 'green' as they want you to believe.

- Necron69

By analogy with "antenna farm".

[Ungrounded Lightning]

can someone explain to me why server farms and wind farms are "farms"?

Probably by analogy with "antenna farm" - an old radio term for a site with a number and usually a variety of antennas. (These were typically a radio amateur running on many bands but some commercial and military "farms" also existed.) It was a joking reference to the crowded cluster of antennas "growing up" from the plot of land like a crop of trees or other cultivated plants in a farm or garden.