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Facebook's Oregon Data Center Uses As Much Power As Entire County
1sockchuck writes "The first phase of the Facebook data center in Oregon uses 28 megawatts of utility power, local officials said this week. That's not extraordinary for a facility of that size in most data center hubs. But it stands out in Crook County, Oregon where all the homes and business other than Facebook use 30 megawatts of power. The economics of Facebook's presence in Oregon are outlined in a new study, which asserts that the Prineville facility has brought tens of millions of dollars into the local economy. The second phase of the Facebook project is now underway, and the local utility grid is being expanded to add capacity."
The study claiming economic benefits was commissioned by Facebook (reader beware).
I have always noticed, the bigger you get, the more power hungry...
FCKGW 09F9 42
..so that you can tell people what you had for your breakfast. And then show them.
But then i'd be purpetuating the problem somewhat :)
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
a source of pollution both on the Net and off.
and build it in africa?
maybe they figure they're not in the electrical generation business, it's more practical if you can buy hydroelectric..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
How much sooner do I have to give up internal combustion engines so that my girlfriend can play farmville? That indian from the 70's is gonna cry a helluva lot more than a single tear when he hears this news.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I'm not too sure why either would want to get into the power business. But they should could waste some capital on some future power tech for kudos.
They can't build Tony Stark's Arc reactor; but they can find some green pie in the sky equivalent. Install solar power on every house in the town. There they've just helped the grid for a few hours a day. Not a bad idea that.
One approach to handle these large scale datacenters and their need for clean, uninterrupted and secure energy can be to do like Facebook and put them way up in northern Sweden:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/27/facebook-green-datacentre-sweden-renewables
/ Jens
...when it costs more energy to blog about your breakfast than it does actually cooking it.
If it takes as high a power consumption as that of an entire US county to let all these non-grown-ups post their weekend pics in order to make eachother even more envious, then that is one more solid argument against the whole Facebook craze. Down and away with it.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Utility / power grids are usually financed with tax money. That means taxpayer.
Is Facebook paying for this upgrade? It damned well better be!!!
Well, if we only count the Oregon data center (28 MW) and Wikipedia tells FB has 800 million active users, that alone makes it average 35kW to serve one person. :S
I looked it up so you don't have to: Crook County is inhabited by 20k people, its economy largely consists of agriculture and tourism so it's no wonder that they do not use massive amounts of electricity.
Real life is overrated.
It'd be a pity if they got raided by the DEA. A real pity.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A few years ago I visited a nuclear power station, and 28 Megawatt was about the output of the ship's diesel engine that they had on standby for emergency power supply to be able to run cooling systems etc. in case the power station itself breaks down and it can't get power from other power stations. I think it is also about what a large cruise ship needs for all its electrical needs. Seems to be a very small county that they are talking about.
28 Megawatts comes to a little over 20GWh per month. If I were to pay my residential rate, that would cost me a cool $2.2 Million per month.
Why are we allowing a company to consume precious resources just so people can tell the world when they take a dump?
It's quite amusing really. With 800 million users and 50% of them logging on every day (Facebook's stats, not stating they are correct), virtual currencies, ways to communicate and now the fact that to power one website, it requires more energy than a state, do you think there is a chance that we'll get some sort of virtual political presence, with countries banding together to form internet UNs, military coups and dictatorships, just like in the real world? Take the following scenario: - The internet becomes a second "world", not restricted to any particular country but, as it should be, a truly free medium made up of nodes surrounding the globe. (possibly moon hosted facilities to try to make it truly independent) - As a world, you start to get "countries". Facebook, youtube, google. - They get political power to shape the internet and form standards, rules and potentially laws based on it. - Anonymous (bit scary), another UN style thing (in which case do anonymous become terrorists?) or nobody at all policies it, leading to extremely fun sci-fi anarchistic environments So, given that situation, what do you see happening?
Did anyone else read that as Country? That would have been news-worthy.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
If the county is expanding their power works and facebook moves its datacenter elsewhere, how used is the county going to feel?
They must have alot of personal data if they need this much power
The Apple way? Oh, you mean outsourcing American manufacturing jobs to China?
Actually, that makes a lot of sense.As long as they have a fat pipe to the internet, who cares where the datacenter is. Costs will be lower in Africa, and solar panels make a lot more sense there.
The Gore (G). The power consumption at Al Gore's house in August 2007 was around 23,000 kWh.
That gives an average draw of around 30kW.
So this baby sucks a nice round 1 kiloGore (1kG).
Set your phasers on "funky"!
They could use solar to reduce their electric bill, but currently it's likely to just cost them more, unless there are subsidies which means taxpayers would be paying for their electricity (in return for hopefully improved solar tech in the long run).
n/t
You can do both at the same time on a Pentium 4.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Article's a bit light on any details... but that facility has to deal with all that heat somehow... and using it to provide heating for local residents would be a very good use of it.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
increasing the power efficiency of electronics, esp, the CPU.
You mean, like Apple, they should focus on pure PR spin to make it seem like they care about environmental issues by installing a few panels at their HQ, while simultaneously outsourcing their server farms as Apple does with its production facilities, to heavily polluting regimes like China? I'm not sure I see what you're driving at.
Ladies and gentleman we have 2001 on the line, hold on...
Oh, they DON'T want their Pentium 4 joke back.
You can keep it!
i read that as country. i shit bricks for a fraction of a second. but thats long enough.
And how soon now until some wag posts "OMG, did you warn them about..." along with a link to the xkcd. It'll be hilarious because we totally haven't seen it before.
It's not Randall's fault, but, xkcd is a cancer on the Internet strangling creativity. Nerds need to stop repeating their boring catchphrases constantly.
Costs in Africa are enormous. For power, both grid and fuel supply are unreliable, so onsite generation and large storage are a must. Latency to users in the US, Asia and Europe is crippling, and corruption is massive, it will drag your deployment out for years.
Actually, that makes a lot of sense.As long as they have a fat pipe to the internet, who cares where the datacenter is. Costs will be lower in Africa, and solar panels make a lot more sense there.
Go to Iceland instead. Lots of hydro power, cooling not a problem, halfway between two of the most important regions to serve...
Ezekiel 23:20
Use the heat to generate electricity for the datacenter!
It's not Randall's fault, but, xkcd is a cancer on the Internet strangling creativity.
If you were right, it WOULD be his fault, because he's the one making it. But you're wrong, because if it weren't for xkcd, we'd just have more star wars quotes or something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Article's a bit light on any details... but that facility has to deal with all that heat somehow... and using it to provide heating for local residents would be a very good use of it.
There's a reason, outside of extremely dense cities, you don't see heat distribution happen -- its horrendously inefficient and expensive.
Crook County is farm-country.
The FB datacenter already runs on hydro power (they're like, 30 miles from the columbia river, which generates something like 50% of the hydroelectric capacity in the US), with an average year round temp in the high 50s.
moox. for a new generation.
Close your FaceBook account.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Hope they've got 30MW on the second and third phases too.
Hydro is one of the only technologies cheaper than solar energy. Solar energy is cheaper than coal, nuclear, and wind, presently.
Apple has 40,000 US employees and 20,000 international employees (not outsourced, they support their respective regions). They also provide all their US tech support from the US, not outsourced.
Paying a contractor to assemble 10,000 iDevices a day in the only place on the planet with that type of manufacturing capacity is not the definition of "outsourcing" you are looking for.
i guess it does make a lot of sense if you're trying to export US jobs to other countries. in turn, that goal makes sense if you would like to see the US die.
Actually, that makes a lot of sense.As long as they have a fat pipe to the internet, who cares where the datacenter is.
I don't think you understand latency. There is no substitute for being physically close.
Costs will be lower in Africa, and solar panels make a lot more sense there.
Land is probably cheaper, but that's about it. Skilled IT people, reliable electricity & reliable fat pipes are difficult to find & expensive.
Part of the reason Prineville is attractive is the local ambient temperature. Many of the datacenter projects (including Facebook) in eastern Oregon use ambient outside air to cool the datacenter most of the year.
I wish someone who couldn't be ignored would make a public challenge to Facebook to make greener data centers. Combine all of the modern power conservation technology with all of the new clean renewable power generation tech they can reasonably afford.
Basically, when you read Facebook in the United States you are burning coal.
Build in Kelowna BC.
http://www.rackforce.com/gigacenter_facility.html
Among the lowest risk locations in North America
Low Carbon Footprint
Powered by ’Green‘ hydro energy
BC Hydro might make D: faces though, that's not where the cheapest power generation is (The cheapest power is all along the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers since that's where the actual Hydro electric dams are.) Just those locations are one land-slide away from being trouble. Kelowna and Kamloops are also situated near a River, but the most danger they have is forest fire.
I imagine that Building anywhere in Washington state and Oregon have similar features as long as you build 30km away from the coastline.
Heat an indoor water park then.
halfway between two of the most important regions to serve...
Not enough fiber capacity to serve either. Even the major US/EU US/asia trunks are congested at peek hours. Infinite bandwidth does not exist when it comes to underseas cable.
It's not Randall's fault, but, xkcd is a cancer on the Internet strangling creativity. Nerds need to stop repeating their boring catchphrases constantly.
Laffo. Because one guy with a crudely drawn comic is somehow bringing down the entire internet. Get a grip.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It is funny how a grossly misleading story can make everyone on /. think this is a lot of power. I know a lot of the posters are trying to feel superior, but using more power than a rural county in Oregon is in no way significant.
Facebook is one of the most open companies in the world, more open than *gasp* Google. They have open sourced most of their data center and hardware designs, internal tools etc which are kicking ass in other companies across the world, note that this is something that Google does not do. They open source stuff only outside their own core businesses and closely guard in secrecy their most revenue generating products. Facebook's mission itself is making the world more open and connected. So why is the pro - open source (free) /. crowd so incensed about Facebook? Because sheeples hand over their private data to Facebook willingly?
I am not a fan of Facebook or Twitter, they are both pretty trite, but it is worth noting that the counties of eastern Oregon are not heavily populated -- this is not east coast or California folks. Although 30 aMW is a lot of power, that is relative, for an industrial or commercial complex it really is not that significant. The title of the post is really a misrepresentation, factually true but misleading to anyone who doesn't know the facts.
the datapipes between usa and euro don't go through iceland do they?
but you know, since i'm not a total troll, before posting, I googled hydropower in oregon. it looks like a good spot - they got lots more than iceland does(more than iceland anyways).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Solar is not cheaper than coal for two simple reasons. It is not noon 24 hours a day 7 days a week without clouds and the land you put it on is not free and neither is the cabling and switching of the power.
Lets run some basic numbers: lets assume 20% solar cells (pretty high) and lets assume 24 hour noon sun 7 days a week without clouds. At the equator that gives us about 160W per m2. So we need 188000m^2 of solar panels, or 18.75Ha, or a square 433 meters on each side completely covered in panels. Only thing is that facebook goes down after noon, or when its cloudy or in the winter or if the panels are not at the equator. Now factor all that in, add some extra capacity, storage and cabling and you quickly see how solar is *not* cheaper than coal.
The cost of solar power is *not* just price per watt at optimal illumination.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
A buddy of mine just ended a 4++ yr. long relationship he had going with a woman, & was finally "out on the market again" to meet somebody else - he NEEDED to, because it turned up she was screwing around on him for 6++ months & living w/ him too!
(Yea - I felt bad for him, he didn't do the same to her is why mostly... that, & I do HATE to see people, especially GOOD people, being "suckered" that way as well - plus, he WAS very "messed up" over it (tears, constantly talking about it, etc./et al)).
Anyhow/anyways:
He's been using facebook to do so. He's dated (and "done well" with mind you) 3 new ladies already, and how? Facebook.
I asked him, verbatim, this question:
"Do you feel that facebook's improved your social/love life?"
His reply, verbatim:
"Oh, man, absolutely! 1000%..."
* The "moral of this story"? Heh - who CARES how much juice facebook eats, when it's helping fellas all over the planet get over their "emotional hassles" (lol, even though I have seen him get "new dogs with diff. fleas" in 1 of the women he's been dating, but? Hey, it's gotten him over the worst of a breakup!).
Is it the "best way" for him to "get over it"? I dunno, maybe it's too much of the "co-dependence" stuff, but as long as it makes him less messed up (and this breakup screwed my buddy "M" up, hard), it's fine by me (him too, lol).
I even told him I'd post this about his feelings & results from facebook usage and, here on /. too no less...
Especially since he thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread pretty much, and, specifically for the purposes described here - seems to work for him too!
APK
P.S.=> Is he using facebook as a 'crutch' to get over his last big relationship? Yes, no questions asked, but as a pal of mine said to me decades ago when I went thru the same thing "The best cure for a woman is another new woman"... there's SOME wisdom to that (as long as you practice "safe you-know-what" & what-not), because it actually USUALLY works (yes, it's substituting one of the same as a fix for the "hair of the dog that bit you" but it does work as I am sure you all know & have been there for too... I know I have!).
... apk
It's not Randall's fault, but, xkcd is a cancer on the Internet strangling creativity. Nerds need to stop repeating their boring catchphrases constantly.
Because before xkcd nerds never repeated catchphrases from, for example, Monty Python...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Finish your pancakes. Somebody in Iowa had to Farmville for two hours to grow those.
They should move to ARM based servers and chuck x86.
At least Monty Python quotes required the gift of allegory in order to match them up with nerd events... With XKCD you literally respond to a post with a meme straight from "the one time that happened on XKCD" and call it a day. Even car analogies were better. I would rather have to think a little than see the same tired stick figure recounting the exact thing the slashdot thread was about.
When I drove last summer through Prineville (a shithole) on my way to John Day (an even bigger shithole) I didn't notice any influx of millions into the local economy. I did however get my tank filled by a gas attendant who was thin as a rail, looked 85 and was missing all his front teeth, so we know good old meth is alive and well in Prineville....
They built their own PHP compiler so that their PHP code is actually running as machine code.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Seems you've forgotten about the laws regarding eavesdropping on any data that leaves or enters America territory.
If they place their data center on foreign soil, the information that passes from America to the destination and back is all subject to different laws.
This is not to say that Facebook isn't already coerced by subpoenas, and that they don't already comply with NSLs and the like, but now there's another layer, because you have TWO governments to deal with. The foreign government, where the data center resides, and the American domestic government, where the business principals live and operate.
Who cares about where the data center is? The federal government.
Lest We forget- The environmental damage caused 70 years ago changed the economy of 8 states- a trading network that had been in place for 10,000 years.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I didn't know how much electricity the datacenters use. Thanks for posting the article.
Actually, that makes a lot of sense.As long as they have a fat pipe to the internet, who cares where the datacenter is.
People on the other end of it. A "fat pipe" is only one half of the network speed equation - bandwidth. The other half is latency. Until/unless someone figures a way to overcome the speed of light, a datacenter in Oregon is always going to be faster for North American users than one in Africa.
That's why content distribution networks like Akamai serve you content from a DC nearest you - to reduce latency.
Advice: on VPS providers
Was talking with the g-friend last night, and the idea that Facebook is just a fad, and maybe a bit like LSD.
She mentioned a quote about how friending someone is just inviting them to partake in our self-aggrandizing hall of mirrors (or something like that). People seem so concentrated on themselves, Facebook is SO big, how can it not be altering people's behavior? Is that behavior really for the better?
Personally, I think it will fade. However, never underestimate people's preponderance with themselves... maybe it'll just be another opiate for the masses?
So, a bit off topic, but hope it contributes to the larger discussion.
-
Whenever you're given a comparison like this, you ought to look closely at the things being compared.
Crook County OR has roughly 21 thousand residents spread out over almost three thousand square miles. The urban suburb I grew up in (Somerville, MA) has over *75* thousand residents crammed into four square miles. For that matter the Queensbridge Housing Project in NYC has almost seven thousand residents in an area about 20-30 acres. You could say, "Facebook's data center uses two and a half times theenergy as the households in a two block radius of the intersection of 41st Ave and 12th St in New York," or, "Facebook uses about as much power as the entire Union Square neighborhood in Somerville, MA." Doesn't sound quite as shocking, does it?
Yes, Facebook's datacenter uses an impressive amount of power, but it's not exactly surprising that it is so large relative to the rest of the county. No doubt they chose the location because it had a lot of electricity generation potential relative to local demand.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Apple has 40,000 US employees
How many of those are manufacturing jobs?
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
The FB datacenter already runs on hydro power (they're like, 30 miles from the columbia river, which generates something like 50% of the hydroelectric capacity in the US), with an average year round temp in the high 50s.
Prineville is NOT 30 miles from the Columbia River. Not even close. How in the hell did this get modded +5 Informative?
Hopefully very few. The screens are about the only part of the device complex enough to warrant building in our economy.
You did not prove that solar is not cheaper. Price per watt at optimal anything is not interesting to anyone, including the GP. New solar lowering business cost is a difficult equation that is case specific. You are just as incorrect as the GP.
I (thought I) deleted my Facebook account a couple months ago (according to their directions, you can't try to log back in to make sure it's deleted, as that will reactivate it), and lately I've been getting emails about people posting things in their facebook accounts. I get the feeling that it isn't really deleted.
www.opencompute.org
Facebook's datacenter and server design has been open sourced. They use the waste heat to bring outside air UP to datacenter cooling temperatures.
in order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
http://xkcd.com/244/
You're right, it's 93 miles. Which is still a lot closer than SF or LA
moox. for a new generation.
Currently +4, but the reason is that it IS informative. You're right, Prineville is about 100 mi. away from the Columbia, not 30, but that doesn't change the fact that Prineville has access to a lot of hydroelectric capacity, because the difference between 30 miles and 100 miles is 70 miles, but it's also negligible.
And he did say "like, 30 miles".
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
You should see what happens when the data center reaches 88 mph!
What waste heat? It all goes to shoving bits at your mom so she can post nudie pictures.
Source? The FB data center gets their electricity from Pacific Power. They buy most of their energy in from external sources. 63% of the power they provide to their customers is from coal-fired power stations. The other provider in the area, the Central Oregon Electricity Co-Op does make use of power from hydro sources.
I think the main reason companies tend to like solar is that it allows them to reduce their peak power use, which on industrial scales has a big impact on the rates you pay. For a typical company HVAC is probably their biggest electrical cost, and it peaks at the same time that solar peaks. So, installing solar panels generates power at the time that getting it from the grid is most expensive. If you can get subsidies or goodwill for doing it then that also helps.
On the other hand, a datacenter is running 24x7, and probably has the highest demand sometime other than noon, with a much more level load vs time. So, the same opportunity just isn't there.
I don't have access to industrial volume pricing on solar components, so it is hard to estimate exact costs. However, 28MWx24x7 is a lot of energy. To generate a substantial portion of that using solar would require a very large array of panels and then some way to store that energy. For residential solar laws are written to allow consumers to sell their power back to the grid at full rates, but there is no way that Facebook could get that deal. They'd need an array capable of generating something like 80MW during the day (of which they're selling 50MW) so that they can make enough money to buy the 28MW for the time they aren't generating much solar. The whole town doesn't use 50MW, so who is going to buy it? The only way I know of to store that kind of power is pumping water up dams, so now it has to build a hydro plant on the side.
If building 100MW-scale solar made commercial sense you'd see more utilities actually doing it.
why do we care about manufacturing jobs that will be done by robots (if we are lucky) in the next decade or two (again if we are lucky)?
If you are in manufacturing, better start learning how to program/operate CNC machines, or how to repair them. Even china is starting to displace humans with robots, so what does that tell you? Robots don't bitch that the lights are too low (or high), they don't need smoke brakes, can work 24H a day 365 days a year with minimal interruptions.
Yes, I'm mad about jobs moving overseas, but at the end of the day most of these positions will be done by robots at some point in the nearest future. Yes there will be some "i need 4 of these" sorts of positions, but those will be much like current day blacksmiths, and glass blowers (both things I'd love to learn).
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.