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

[icebike]

Title there is ONLY because it was Microsoft.
Any other company, and it would go unnoticed.

Why wasn't the Washington state utility board dragged thru the mud on this one instead of a company acting responsibly to reduce energy consumption?

Re:This is not a Microsoft issue

[Mashiki]

There's an easy answer. They could simply build some wind mills or slap in some solar panels and then have the utility pay them at 30-80c/Kwh via a FiT(feed in tariff) like we do here in Ontario for green energy. I'm sure that it would all balance out in time.

PPA's

[ArhcAngel]

Basically large companies need to know what their costs are going to be long term. They enter in to Power Purchasing Agreements with electricity generators much like leasing a building. Based on these agreements the electricity generator knows what is expected of it's power plants and maintains them to meet these requirements. If demand is lower than expected they may have to shut down a plant or two since there isn't an economical way to store electricity on such a large scale. It costs a lot of money to shut down one of these facilities and even more to ramp back up. Rather than eat these costs many PPA's include penalties that will cover these contingencies. Since I'm tl;dr the article I don't know if that's what happened here but it makes sense that if Microsoft overestimated it's power needs on its PPA then these fines would have been to cover the plants down time. Since another comment mentioned hydro generation I'm guessing Microsoft running inefficient on purpose to avoid the fines didn't hurt the environment too much.

Re:PPA's

[Immerman]

Since folks seem to be listing their favorite emerging high-capacity energy storage technologies here I'll add my own - liquid metal batteries. Batteries the size of shipping containers containing the three layers of molten materials: a metal base, a lighter electrolyte, and an even lighter metal "cap". Since the electrodes are liquid they don't suffer from the degradation that eventually renders normal batteries ineffective. And as long as they're seeing heavy enough usage the internal resistance provides enough heat to keep everything molten, and the potential charging/dischargeing current is pretty phenomenal since you don't have to worry about destroying your electrodes in the process..

Typical Slashdot title

[bi$hop]

I have a love/hate relationship with Slashdot. One thing is for sure: I'm tired of all the *nix fan boys who find every possible way to smear Microsoft. Here are a few alternative titles, just to irk the haters:

"Microsoft wisely saves $140,000 by simply using electricity."

"Microsoft deliberately uses electricity to avoid ridiculous fine."

"Microsoft forces utility board to reduce ludicrous fine by $10,000."

"Microsoft exposes power company's pollution-inducing practices."

An even more economical way to store electricity

[Taco Cowboy]

Pumped storage plant has been used since the 1960's, but it does require a dam.

On places where there is no dam, this method can not be deployed.

However, technological advancement has enabled us another way - by using ultra-capacitors.

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/piprod/documents/Session_D_Miller_rev.pdf

Advancement on capacitor technology resulted in capacitors that can store HUGE amount of electricity for a LONG time, with miniscule loss.

And many are being deployed in power grids - not only as a power storage but also acting as a power stabilizer - the ultra-capacitor can "soak up" power spikes and release power during "brown outs".