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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).
..so that you can tell people what you had for your breakfast. And then show them.
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.
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.
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
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.
That's what I thought initially. The CIA World Factbook includes electricity consumption statistics for many countries and regions. Note that they're listed in kWh per year; 28 MW translates to about 245,000,000 kWh per year. This puts the data center at around #174 on that list, ahead of Rwanda, Eritrea, Belize, Bhutan, Chad, and Tonga, to pick a few (though note that the data for many of those countries is a few years old, so they may have moved up). For comparison, the entire US is listed at 3,741,000,000,000 kWh per year. This data center is then around 0.007% of the US's power usage.
Since there are something like 3000 counties in the US, assuming uniform distribution, an average sized county would have 1/3000 = ~0.033% of the country's electricity consumption. This county then has around 7/33 ~= 21% of the average population. That average would be ~300 million / 3000 = 100,000 people per county: and indeed, Crook County, Oregon has approximately 21,000 = 100,000 * 21% people. So actually the electricity consumption of the county appears to be quite average, even though it sounds rural from the Wikipedia page.