Cool post over here about plans to build data centres where good sources of renewable energy exist.
The theory goes like this;
- Transmission of energy to a data centre located close to use = mucho expensive
- Transmission of data via fibre from location of plentiful renewable energy = more affordable
It’s all about leveraging virtualization and smart cloud monitoring software to switch in and out individual centres depending on their current energy availability status.
Cool…..
I think I see some very bogus physics here. Electricity losses in direct transmission are higher than if converted into light pulses over fibre? So why aren’t electricity utilities converting electricity to light for long distance transmission. Who’s kidding who?
Going in the opposite direction, there are also interesting ideas for making use of the excess heat generated by these facilities, like this example in Switzerland – a swimming pool powered by heat from a nearby data centre:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/040908-data-center-heats-pool.html
google has been busy building solar-power energy farms right next to its datacentres.
for quite a while now.
@jim – i think the theory goes that if you move the processing close to the electricity you only need to transmit low power data over fibre instead of raw electricity over big cables. Do the processing close to source and move processed materials – same theory as the Bluff aluminium smelter – no?
@maetl – yep I saw that awhile ago – nice idea indeed
Thanks for explanation – brain wasn’t working yesterday!
@Jim – happens to the best of us!