Microsoft Pollutes To Avoid Fines

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Quincy data center, physical home of Bing and Hotmail, was fined $210,000 last year because the data center used too little electricity. To avoid similar penalties for 'underconsumption of electricity' this year, the data center burned through $70,000 worth of electricity in three days."

Comments

This is not a Microsoft issue

[Jailbrekr]

This is an issue with a utility company. The fact that it was Microsoft is a red herring. If anything, utilities should have a pricing structure that punishes overconsumption and rewards under-consumption. In this instance the utility is ass backwards and they should be the ones who are shamed.

Re:This is not a Microsoft issue

[queazocotal]

Infrastructure costs money to put in.
If you need signisicant extra infrastructure put in for your use, the normal pricing structure is likely to assume that you will use it, not simply (as a data centre might) leave it idle unless other power fails.

The real fail is that Microsoft failed to negotiate a proper contract to avoid the needless waste of resource.

Re:This is not a Microsoft issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The utility companies have no incentive at all to punish overconsumption. They make more money that way.

They have very good reasons to punish underconsumption....if you don't buy enough from them they have trouble covering their costs.

That is why electricity costs always go *up* during economic recessions....people scale back their use and so the companies have to charge more to maintain the same levels of profitability.

And the utilities can get away with this because they are natural monopolies.

Re:stupid inaccurate title as usual

[Your.Master]

The problem is that there isn't a rational basis for not just allowing Microsoft to pay for $70k in power and not use it -- donate it for free back to the energy company, if you will. They have to actually waste the electricity to get lower prices. This situation isn't good for anybody.

- The environment loses because, although this utility is a hydro source, energy is fungible and it's likely that a fossil plant had to make up the difference somewhere in the grid. I could be wrong, it's possible it would just have been dissipated (or just not extracted from the plant in the first place).
- The utility loses out on $140k.
- Microsoft has to burn a bunch of energy to no end.

In this round, Microsoft got off easiest. Last round, the utility got off easiest. But there's no effective difference between this and Microsoft paying $70k and *not* consuming that power, except that the utility potentially can sell $70k of power elsewhere, which is actually good for them, or at worst, non-bad. Why is that not happening?

Re:PPA's

[hairyfeet]

Well then nobody should bitch when ANY company, be it MSFT or fricking Toys R' Us, blows through power just to keep from getting fined. If the cost of blowing through the power is less than the fine, which thanks to the agreement it most certainly is? Then they would be dumb NOT to blow through the power, and would get called to the carpet for blowing shareholder's money by taking fines over meeting their end of the agreement.

But I'm sure just as the article's flamebait headline suggests its just another excuse for clickbait. if people have a problem with this? then they should outlaw those agreements.

Re:An even more economical way to store electricit

[GrpA]

I take it then you've never heard of compressed-air power storage?

Same principle as with dams, except very large air tanks are used. Scroll compressors and turbines make it possible the most efficient way of storing excess power as well, and the system is near-zero maintenance, unlike batteries. Demand response is also good and the most useful thing about this system is that it scales down to tiny installations - to the point that it could be used to save power from solar during the day for overnight use.

GrpA