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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)
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
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 !
This is a penalty due to a contractual obligation. It's not a fine.
It's still wasteful, though.
Actually, after RTFA, the real problem seems to be that Microsoft spent too long running off its emergency diesel generators - 100 times as long as its neighbour Yahoo (which was also fined for underestimation of use, and paid up without resorting to these sort of tactics). And it seems that Microsoft did not waste $70k worth of power, they threatened to do so, and even started to do so to make it clear that they were prepared to carry the threat out, but the utility settled for reducing the fine to $60k, and Microsoft called off the wastage.
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 !
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.