Slashdot Mirror
Why Is Google Opening a New Data Center In a Former Coal-Fired Power Plant?
HughPickens.com writes: Quentin Hardy reports at the NY Times that Google has announced it is opening its 14th data center inside a former coal-fired power plant in Stevenson, Alabama. While there is considerable irony in taking over a coal-burning plant and promoting alternative power, there are pragmatic reasons Google would want to put a $600 million data center in such a facility. These power facilities are typically large and solid structures with good power lines. The Alabama plant is next to a reservoir on the Tennessee River with access to lots of water, which Google uses for cooling its computers. There are also rail lines into the facility, which makes it likely Google can access buried conduits along the tracks to run fiber-optic cable. In Finland, Google rehabilitated a paper mill, and uses seawater for cooling. Salt water is corrosive for standard metal pipes, of course, so Google created a singular cooling system using plastic pipes.
much coal, very frost, royal, wow!
Why not?
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Reasons
Mystery solved.
Sigger than your average
it's because coal is the future, and google is getting into the coal power business. duh!
pretty soon, they'll be introducing a coal-powered autonomous car where the steering wheel is replaced with a simple search box, and all of the windows are replaced with ads.
i can't wait!
Because it was cheap and fit their needs?
Google takes over coal powerplant, converts to data center and installs a bunch of renewables?
That's...not irony.
Coal is the new energy http://www.dailymotion.com/vid...
The seawater cooled plant would have had brass tubing that is very resistant to salt water corrosion, but since that brass is worth quite a bit it would have been removed and sold when the place was shut down. Of course if you don't have to worry much about heat there are plenty of types of cheap platic tubing that can do the job.
The only "irony" here is that power stations typically don't have a lot of floor space for the amount of area they occupy once you pull the boilers out, so maybe a one floor datacenter taking up the same volume as a six floor one.
I doubt it. More likely, TVA has already run fiber optic lines to the plant using fiber optic cables in the shield wire.
> In Finland, Google rehabilitated a paper mill, and uses seawater for cooling. Salt water is corrosive for standard metal pipes, of course, so Google created a singular cooling system using plastic pipes.
The water in the Bothnian bay and Bothnian sea is not salt water.
A power plant that size would normally have a warehouse, a machine shop, and a training center, all of which could be converted to data center use without much trouble. The turbine floor can be converted as well, once you fill in the holes left by removal of the generators & turbines. Removal of the boiler house and pollution control equipment would leave room to build new data center space. The plant offices and cafeteria will probably be left as is and used for the same purpose by Google.
Power plants are not as solidly built as the NYT writer assumes. The foundation and structural steel are substantial, but the walls tend to be flimsy. In particular, the boiler house walls are designed to blow off in the event of a steam pipe rupture to prevent the boiler house from exploding.
Makes sense if they need a center in that part of the country.
Useful for the same reasons TVA put a power plant there.
The river makes a good cold sink.
The rail line makes it easy to bring fiber connectivity.
It is near places in need of service like Atlanta.
Available because TVA doesn't need it anymore.
I'm suprised they did not take the never started Atomic plant just up the road.
The Tate Modern, London, formerly the Bankside generation plant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
noun, plural ironies.
1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning:
the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.
2. Literature. a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
(especially in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., especially as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.
3. Socratic irony.
4. dramatic irony.
5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
6. the incongruity of this.
7. an objectively sardonic style of speech or writing.
There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ironic about this.
Well with the current owners and operators of Slashdot, maybe you will. But really Slashdot, do we need to drop down to clickbait?
To be steampunk AF >:)
What makes for better headlines than Google opening up a data center in an old industrial brownfield? They probably got tons of tax credits and government subsidies for doing so.
That would still be a reason. A bad reason, but still a reason.