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

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.