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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.
...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
Or you could put your data center in Quebec, almost exclusively producing electricity from water and with little problem with cooling 10 months out of 12. There's a reason while so many aluminum plants are present in that Canadian province. Bonus : link the the Chicago network hub is easier from there than from northern Sweden.
With data center like these, they can expect less than 0.03 $CAD per kWh.
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.
28,000,000 / 800,000,000 = 0.035 Watts/user
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.
Does the ridiculous figure you come up with not make you question your working? 35 electric fires constantly on per user of facebook? In one datacentre? Are you high?
I pray you are not in any science or engineering disciplines ...
0.035 Watts/user you spoon
Or you could (bride/ pay off / incentivise / lobby ) facebook to your town in return for jobs. Fuck the environment this is money for money.
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
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).
Except he was a white guy who played an indian....
You can do both at the same time on a Pentium 4.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Does the ridiculous figure you come up with not make you question your working? 35 electric fires constantly on per user of facebook? In one datacentre? Are you high?
My calculation was sponsored by the Green Party.
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.
i read that as country. i shit bricks for a fraction of a second. but thats long enough.
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
Like drawing pictures of your hum drum day-to-day activities on the walls of your cave?
Or the diaries of Samuel Pepys?
28,000,000 / 800,000,000 = 0.035 Watts/user
If they only had one data centre.
They have a European data centre in Sweden, and has at least nine across the US
br.That's still only 0.35W per user, but an order of magnitude is huge no matter who you ask.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
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.'"
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.
It's conceivable that all the datacenters aren't 35MW.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Good gravy, where do you people get your facts?
Twitter is for telling the world when you take a dump. Facebook is for "liking" when your Twitter friends take a dump. The more you know [tm].
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.
You know those people who claim the Earth is 10,000 years old? You are twice as wrong as them.
Do you think about your answers for even a split second to see if they make any sense at all?
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?
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
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
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.