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More Data Centers Using On-Site Solar Power
1sockchuck writes "Solar power hasn't been widely used in data centers because it takes a very large installation of photovoltaic solar panels to generate the levels of energy required by these facilities. But the month of April has seen the debut of four new data centers featuring on-site solar arrays."
Solar power is a perfect match for data centers. Their power demand is basically constant and they already have large batteries on site. So the main drawback of solar power isn't a problem for them (mostly).
While I don't think it would be feasible to run a data center only on solar, it could help with a big thing: cooling. The hotter it is outside, the harder those A/Cs have to work and the more energy they use. Well, conveniently the hotter it is outside the more direct sun the solar panels tend to get so the more power they generate. Kinda of an automatic offset. When the power demand is the most, the panels give you the most.
You'd still need line power to run the data center, particularly at night, but you could help offset your costs in a big way.
It's not necessary for solar to cover the entire power needs of a data center. It'd be nice if it did, but any power generated is money saved on their electric bill (and less drain on the general grid). And as stated above- they already have lots of batteries to cover (if) any surplus generated, and a fairly constant demand.
Well I think its a great step.
But the HVAC needs to be efficent too (maybe more so) . It would make significant improvements to the energy use if the cooling systems were slightly smarter and the build design took it into account, add solar power to that and its a winner.
Anyway, one can only hope the trend will continue, even if only for two very selfish reasons:
a. the more mainstream the PV are, the lower the price on all the market (10 years to ROI for a decent PV home installation is still too expensive to my taste).
b. the more pressure on energy consumption to run a data center, the higher chances computer (part) manufacturers to research techs with lower energy requirements.
I reckon both of them would be good (medium/long term) for my pocket as well.
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This hits the nail on the head. Solar PV to offset during the day and grid power at night. I'm sick of Greenies pretending that Solar is the panacea of all things power related, and sick of the short sighted people saying it has no place in power and that's the end of story.
This is where we should be heading. More solar power in plants with a large HVAC requirement. So during the day when it's hot you can offset the cooling energy required, and the result is reducing the grid power which is attainable, rather than replacing base load generation with some magical fairy green power station... which is not!
It's less about the power and more for the tax breaks, obviously.
Does anyone have any idea how much energy these panels will be saving simply by using the sunlight for something other than heating the building? I realize you could accomplish much the same thing with a simple awning, but it seems like it should still be part of the calculation.
That over the next 20 years, there will be no advances in technology leading to better efficiency and lower cost.
Every tech when starts getting adopted is expensive. For example, could anyone afford a computer at home in 1960s?
As technology advances, and costs come down, solar will become more and more viable. So to dismiss a tech just because currently its not economically viable is basically foolhardy.
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if you are able to, and able to afford solar power installation, you really should. the amount of energy panels produce to the cost of the panels per square foot means, to produce all your electricity for a home or business with solar, costs about 7 - 10 years of your energy bills, and most panels now are guaranteed to last a minimum of 25 years. not only will they eventually save you a lot of money (as energy costs are only going to go up), they can allow you to make money if you get a "feed-in-tariff" that allows you to sell your excess production back to the grid
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Here's the skinny -
PV Costs about $5 per watt, installed (and that's cheap. It's usually much more). Never mind the cost of the silicon technology, the majority of that cost is in brackets, adhesives, other hardware, wires, labor... Costs which are fully mature and not going to go down. So, assume an average upper middle-class house in south Texas that uses roughly 100 kWh per day (Central A/C in a large-ish house is a bitch!) and forget about batteries. So a 10 kW system is going to cost us $50,000 (10,000 watts * $5) and generate 60 kWh per day, during the daytime only (6 hours of good direct sun). We still need grid power to get to our 100 kWh usage.
Similarly, that Grid power only costs $0.12/kWh, so the same power from the grid only costs us $7.2 per day vs. the $50,000 solar array. (And trust me, when it's 105 degrees in the summer time, for months at a time, that $7.20 feels damn cheap.)
Going further, $216.0/month for grid power, vs. a $330/month payment on a 20 year loan @ 5% interest.
Or, better yet, invest your $50,000 that you already have in an index fund, get an average 7% return and EARN $390 per month over the next 20 years. Now your grid power is free and you make an extra $174/month, and have zero maintenance worries (dust, corrosion, etc.) or insurance costs (hail, baseballs, etc.)
And that's only in the summer time. My winter electricity usage is about half that, which makes the solar picture even bleaker.
People who value their money more than their conscience will never buy solar, until the cost of grid power essentially doubles. And to be truly competitive, the cost of grid power needs to triple. But what would that do to our economy when everything you buy has power as one of its major embedded costs?
Does anyone see this as anything other that a PR stunt? Facebook's datacenter uses 30MW of electricity -- a 100KW solar panel array will produce 0.1% of their power - not even a drop in the bucket. (note that it's not 0.3% since the solar panels don't provide power all day).
If they were really interested in reducing their carbon footprint with solar, they'd be investing in one of the large-scale power plants being built in the desert where they can buy more KW per dollar. it doesn't matter whether they reduce carbon in Arizona or in Oregon, it's all the same to the environment.
And if they were *really* interested in reducing their carbon footprint, they'd use a small nuclear reactor to generate 100% of their power on-site. Which would make a *real* difference in their carbon footprint rather than a meaningless symbolic gesture.
A solar panels to day will make about 180 to 250 watts in good sunlight near noon and is twice as large as 1 RU rack server. We put 42 servers in a rack. Now if you take into account the extra space between the racks and apply that for A/C then you still can cover about 1/80 of the needs of a data centre with modern solar near noon.
Google powers its servers off 12V DC with inbuilt batteries on each server. The savings in power costs make this worth it. http://insidehpc.com/2009/04/02/google-unveils-its-super-secret-server-design-dc-and-batteries-built-in/
My Internet outpost "in the boonies" is 100% solar-powered. Cheap panels from sunelec.com, commodity motherboard with DC-DC power supply from mini-box.com, golf cart batteries (shorter life, but cheap) from a local supplier. A bucking DC-DC converter makes a small amount of 48VDC for the telco hardware.
I built the whole thing for less than the install fees demanded by the local power monopoly.
They get an A for effort: a solar panel can provide enough power to run a coffee maker, and perhaps a bit of cooling. Some might think I'm being cynical, but I'm not. The truth is that the energy from the sun (at the equator) on a cloudless day at noon is 8 watts per square meter. Solar panels are less than 20% efficient, but for the math give them a full 20%. So 1 square meter of panels produces 1.6 watts. Lets say that the data center has 5 rows of panels, 2 meters by 60 meters (6 feet by 197 feet). So each row is 120 square meters, and the entire array is 600 square meters. It can produce 960 watts of power. A small coffee maker is only 600 watts, a bigger model is 900 watts, and in an office, you want the bigger one. Of course, it could run a single PC (my machine has an 800 watt power supply). I don't pull 800 watts from it all the time, usually its less than that, but for the cost of the panels, you could purchase power for the datacenter for a year. Oh, and as for transportation, the area of the panels is roughly equivalent to the sides of 3 city busses end to end by the height of each bus. And an area that size produces 1 1/4 horsepower, kinda like an underpowered moped.