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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."
You get fined for saving electricity now?
Where is this world going...
It was a perfectly sane response to the situation, and btw the generation is from hydro so really what added pollution was there?
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.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
I can see why Microsoft has to plan ahead with the utility to produce the right amount of electricity, and agree to some penalty for a bad estimate, since the extra production and distribution capacity obviously are not free. But what's odd is that the fine for under-usage would be more expensive than the cost of full usage. You'd think the power company could at least reduce production somewhat and so give Microsoft partial credit for what they don't use.
To avoid similar penalties for 'underconsumption of electricity' this year, the data center burned through $70,000 worth of electricity in three days.
What'd they do, shift all the load to AMD servers?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
And the utilities can get away with this because they are natural monopolies.
Why are the utilities natural monopolies, other than because of city governments' failure to efficiently estimate the cost of tearing up a road to install conduit?
At the very least, they could have mined themselves some bitcoins.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The fact that it's M$, as mentioned above, is a fluke. Large power consumers will enter into contracts that say 'we will use Xm to XM power annually with S loadshape, will not consume more than L peak power at once, and will throttle our power use up or down if asked to N times a year fo D days.'
Deals like this help optimize generation and keeps the grid balanced. Unlike in SimCity, you can't just plop down a stack of generators and wait for load to catch up with it, the generators have to output at a fixed 50/60hz (+/- a little). Like a truck engine, the fuel required to keep a particular speed is dependent on the load at any one time. Forecasting this load then becomes an issue that a *lot* of utilities put time, money, and effort into, so that they can ramp up or down as needed, keep to their own contracts of power quality and quantity, and efficiently use the generators they have. It's not like they're happy about selling less power when the loan payments on the multimillion US$ generator comes up each month.
The power customer with simply taking the more contractually prudent course of action ~ spending $70k, rather than spending $210k. The fine is as much to cover the fuel burned on generators that were left spinning for the customer as to thwack them upside the head about contracts.
(disclaimer, I write software for the energy industry)
Pollutes? Well that's a really extrem term. The used up energy to no end. But that's not directly pollution. With headlines like this it feels like slashdot is becoming a tabloid.
Most of us here at slashdot know that energy is produced anyway and we are fairly unable to store it. If anything we're unable to store it in any efficient way. If it is like the first post here says too, that it was produced with hydro-power, then where's the problem?
Simply stating "Your minimum electric bill shall be x" would have made everyone happy.
I asked a friend who works there. :(
They used it for Folding@Home.
Such a waste.
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.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Look a little closer...
Microsoft, when it was looking for a place to locate, chose this rural Washington town because the town offered them electricity at about 1/3 the regular going rate, as long as they purchased a certain amount of electricity from this municipal utility.
It was a contract, one of those things that both sides are supposed to honor.
Microsoft didn't have to "wastefully burn" the additional energy, but they were contractually obligated to meet the conditions of the contract: cheap electricity if bought in bulk.
Microsoft could have just met the contractual obligation by paying what it had promised to pay.
The entire "wastefully burning" energy was done by Microsoft to try to shame the municipality into giving them an even sweeter sweetheart deal, something that mega-corporations are doing in all 50 states. Create enough negative publicity ("Government forces Microsoft to waste electricity!!!") and the municipality would say, "Sure, fine, don't pay us what you promised to pay us when we gave you the land, built the infrastructure that your datacenter required and gave you enormous tax dodges on top of that. Just stop saying we forced you to waste energy!".
This is why you have to look a layer or two deeper than the headline or summary when you see a story that seems a little too neatly designed to create outrage.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There are 24 hours in a day. If you consume a million watts continuously for nonproductive purposes you can waste 24,000 kWH of electricity. If each kWH costs you 3.5 cents, you can waste 840 dollars per day of electricity. If your contract requires you to use $70,000 dollars worth of electricity by the end of the year,or face a more expensive penalty, you can save money by running those heaters continuously for 83 straight days. But the deadline is in only 14 days! What to do? Easy. Just increase the wastage to 6 million watts.
The logistics of this little operation sound impressive.
Microsoft had a contract to buy a certain amount of power and get a good discount. They didn't buy enough power so had to pay a higher price.
I don't think this has anything to do with "idiots in state and local government".
It's a contract matter between the power producer and a corporation.
If Microsoft had been able to convince more people to use Bing and Hotmail they wouldn't be in this position.
(Cue the Bing and Hotmail jokes.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
What'd they do, shift all the load to AMD servers?
Don't be silly. Every one of the towers come with a huge button named in bright letters TURBO. They pushed that button in every machine.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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."
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".
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Not sure if serious...
As awesome as SETI is, and as much as I like SETI@Home (started using it during the 90s, I forget exactly when), I think Folding@Home has a better per-CPU-cycle impact on the human race. Protein folding is a big deal for medical research, and it's very hard to automate efficiently. F@H is a somewhat brute-force approach, but it gets results.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
This is a penalty due to a contractual obligation. It's not a fine.
It's still wasteful, though.
So the problem would have been avoided, if Microsoft could sell that electricity again. They might have lost some money (or not, since residential rates are much higher) but wouldn't have to waste the whole thing.
In other countries you get the grid from the local power company but then can pick a provider. Funny enough that works only if there is a strong government organization in charge of "deregulating" the network monopoly. Kind of what the US tried with phone lines before the baby bells got rid of it again.
I don't think that there are many ultra capacitors adding storage capacity to grids. Its definitely on the table for the future however at the moment the capacitor banks that you see at your transmission yards are actually for power factor correction not power storage.
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
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
There are not more than 8 factories that I know of, that are producing industrial-grade ultra-capacitors, that are to be deployed for the purpose of power-storage / power-stabilizing, near power generating plants and also in the power grid.
And all the factories are churning out ultra-capacitors as fast as they can.
But it is not enough.
That is why it will take some time for more ultra-capacitors to show up in places that need them.
The bottle-neck is with the manufacturers.
The main patent for the ultra-capacitors is owned by Sanyo, of Japan.
They were actually trying to find ways to develop an ultra-capacity rechargeable battery. They came up with the idea of using nano-scale materials (that was back in the late 1990's or so) and successfully produced a re-chargeable NiMH battery that can keep the charge for as long as 36 months, and at 97% capacity.
That patent was subsequently licensed to other re-chargeable battery manufacturers - including GP and Energizer.
And later, someone found that the same technique can be also used in enhancing ultra-capacitors, so they licensed it to capacitor manufacturers.
However, the industrial grade capacitor manufacturers in this planet that we live in happen to behave much like OPEC.
There are only few manufacturers and they control the market, and they restrict the manufacturing to only a handful factories - so that they can charge an arm and a leg for their products.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Ultra-capacitors are indeed being deployed to the grid to great success. But the cost estimate of $0.05 kWh/cycle is in addition to the cost of generation. Currently the average cost of generation is $0.05 kWh so any electricity you generate and store now costs you $0.1 kWh. You just DOUBLED the cost of your electricity! It's still the best cost/benefit option for grid storage just not as appealing as having a PPA with a built in cushion. I suspect more widespread adoption will require regulation.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Compressed air has some major losses due to heat. As you compress the air it heats up considerably after it cools the heat energy is lost. Pumped storage can also be deployed on a much larger scale given the right geological layout.
What is the $/kWh of industrial supercaps right now? The article you linked above had some projected numbers from startup companies, one of which seems to have gone under and the other of which is still in startup mode. I just helped put together an experimental off-grid PV system with 3kWh lead acid capacity at somewhere from $200-$250/kWh storage cost.
Is there anywhere a hobbyist or researcher could buy a few kWh of indsutrial supercaps?
It's an electricity distribution problem and should never be a data centre problem. A small pump storage system near me can sustain 500MW for a while when you pull the plug and let the water out. Most are much larger. I know Microsoft have very large data centres but I cannot see them needing anywhere near 500MW for one of them.
We're only discussing this due to an enormous fuckup that should never happen - the sort of thing more braindead than any example of a government stuffup used to push the myth that private enterprise is always better at making use of resources.
A workaround is to add a bit of water (mist) to absorb that heat- reducing the temperature increase and thus the energy loss.
The problem is they want MORE for not using it. Doesn't sound like MS had any problem with paying the $70k. They agreed to buy power at a bulk rate and that rate stands, use it or not. The problem they had is the utility company wanted to charge them more for not using power than for using it. The opted to simply use it.
Think of it like this: Suppose I make a deal with you where you get two tanks of gas per month, for a year, at a fixed price. You do it to get a better price, I do it to get a revenue stream up front. If you go over, you have to pay more, but you don't get a refund for going under. So you go on vacation one month, and don't use your fillups. I then send you a fine for twice the cost of the tank of gas. I say you have to pay more because you neglected to fill up.
See how stupid that would be?
If the utility company was saying to MS "You used less power than you thought you would, but you still have to pay us for the bulk contract," and MS was refusing, I'd be supporting the utility company. You agree to the bulk deal, you pay for the bulk deal, use it or not. However they are saying "You used less power than you thought, so we want you to pay the bulk rate, and then pay an additional 200% for the power you didn't use." Hence the utility company is stupid.
On places where there is no dam, this method can not be deployed
Oh sigh.On places where there is no dam AND nobody understands how to transport electricity, this method can be deployed.
The netherlands USES this methods and the dams are in Norway. That is quite a distance, look it up on Apple Maps!
This is no workaround.
When you absorb the heat in water it is still lost. The only effect is that the temperature will be lower.
Power companies love pumped storage because it is one of the few types of power stations which is basically instant-on. They can charge it out on the market at ridiculous prices.
The bad part is, every site that is suitable for pumped storage either already has it, or can't get it because of the environmental permitting. All the best "natural" sites have it already. Sure, you can take the top off a mountain and build a man-made lake where the top of the mountain used to be, but people really frown on that. The quantities of water needed to make any sort of difference is staggering. It has to be a big reservoir.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
The temperature is much lower and so less heat energy is lost during the storage. The rate of cooling is much lower.
And a fair amount of the heat in the water can allegedly be reused:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericagies/2012/01/25/greening-the-grid-lightsail-aims-to-make-power-cleaner-by-making-energy-storage-cheap-and-plentiful/
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/danielle-fong/