Nordic Nations Pitch For US Data Centers

judgecorp writes "Nordic nations are all pitching for business from data centre owners, based on their countries' excellent network provision, plentiful electricity from renewable sources, and a climate where servers can be kept cool cheaply, using the ambient air temperature, with no need for chillers. A Swedish delegation is visiting California to lure other players to follow Facebook into Sweden. Meanwhile, Iceland now has a new multi-tenant data centre to join the existing Thor site, and Denmark has a container-park data centre for its financial industry."

Comments

Denmark, you must be kidding

[jlar]

Denmark gets most of our electricity from coal based electricity plants and a small percentage from renewable sources (mainly wind). And we have the most expensive electricity (~41 cents per kWh) in Europe and only topped by Tonga in the World. You would have to be literally insane to place an international data center here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing

The financial industry data center is probably placed here because of sensitivity of data or because they have to be placed close to the stock exchange. Or something along that line. It is surely not because we have plentiful cheap and renewable energy.

Re:Iceland???

[_Shad0w_]

That being the magma they use to generate around 25% of their power requirements via geothermal energy. The majority of the other 75% comes from hydroelectric. Less than 1% of their power comes from fossil fuels. They also use the geothermal energy for heating the vast majority of buildings in Iceland.

The average temperature is also bellow 15C, afaicr, which makes cooling things a doddle.

All things considered, I wouldn't mind living there. If their economy wasn't fucked.

Yup

[upside]

As mentioned, the Swedes have declared all data passing through it free game for its security apparatus. Great for hosting your sensitive data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#Sweden

Re:Iceland???

[FriendlyLurker]

Icelands economy has recovered nicely. So well in fact that it is making Ireland, Portugal, and Greece jealous.

Quote from last link:

ICELAND pursued better policies than Ireland or Latvia when the three countries' economies collapsed in 2007 because the Reykjavik government allowed banks to fail, according to a new report by the influential Bruegel think tank." ... "The experience with the collapse of the gigantic Icelandic banking system suggests that letting banks fail when they had a faulty business model can be the right choice," the report notes.

Finland, three new nuke plants coming

[Suomi-Poika]

Too bad we were forgotten from TFA, in 2009 Google placed their server farm to an old paper mill in Hamina. Now the 5th nuclear power plant (1800MW, what we buy from abroads now) is "soon" completed (before 2015 I hope) and two more are coming.

We have cheap co2 free electricity and cold weather. I believe Finland is going to get a lot of data centers because in addition of chilly weather and good infrastructure here companies can buy a portion of nuclear power producer and get tax free electricity from their "own" nuclear power station. Other Nordic countries do not have such arrangements, there you pay the market price of electricity even if you own a power producer.

Re:Iceland???

[dkleinsc]

It wasn't quite "allowing the banks to fail" in the sense that the Icelandic equivalent of FDIC kicked in and the banks were nationalized, but the key thing was that Iceland spent absolutely no cash on trying to bail out holders of stocks and bonds. It's that combination of socialism and capitalism that is not uncommon in European nations: The socialism is enough to ensure that you'll survive. The capitalism means that if you're invested in a big bank, or a CEO who's made some dumb decisions, you take your losses.