[CAnet - news] Iceland Woos Data Centers As Power Costs Soar

For more information on this item please visit my blog at 
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/ or http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com
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[Some excerpts From Slashdot Frontpage article from BusinessWeek. Northern
countries like Canada and the Nordic countries are well positioned to
capture some of this data center business.  In the past these countries used
to lobby hard for large energy consuming industries like aluminum smelters -
now the opportunity is with the much cleaner data centers and high tech
jobs. High speed optical networks are the key for attracting data centers.
There still remains an abundance of tapped renewable power which is
uneconomic to ship to more populous areas because of the cost of
transmission lines etc.  But this power is ideal for date centers, because
rather than shipping the power to the data center, with optical networks we
can bring the data center to the power.  In essence the data gets almost
free renewable power because no other industry can access it. See
http:/green-broadband.blogpsot for more information--BSA]

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_13/b4077060400752.htm

It's Too Darn Hot
The huge cost of powering-and cooling-data centers has the tech industry
scrambling for energy efficiency
[...]
Haflioason works for Invest in Iceland, a government agency. He's pitching
the desolate spot outside of Grindavik as a site for data centers, the
sprawling facilities chock-full of computers that tech companies build to
handle the swelling oceans of digital information.

It's a testament to the challenges companies face in operating data centers
that Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Microsoft (MSFT) have all checked out
this remote corner of the world (although none has made a commitment so
far). The reason: Iceland has a rare combination of vacant land, cheap
geothermal energy, and chilly climate that makes cooling a data center
nearly free.

The tech industry is facing an energy crisis. The cost of power consumption
by data centers doubled between 2000 and 2006, to $4.5 billion, and could
double again by 2011, according to the U.S. government. With energy prices
spiking, the challenge of powering and cooling these SUVs of the tech world
has become a major issue for corporations and utilities. "The digital
economy is pervasive," says Andy Karsner, Assistant U.S. Energy Secretary
for energy efficiency. "The demands for computing will grow exponentially,
but electric consumption can't grow the same way."


[...]
Little wonder, perhaps: In the future, the competition between Google and
Microsoft in the Web search business might be determined as much by data
center energy efficiency as by which company writes the best search
algorithm.

Think of the data center as the factory for the info economy. Every day, in
thousands of nondescript buildings in the hinterlands or in the basements of
office towers, trillions of chunks of information coded in ones and zeros
are moved, stored, and assembled into new shapes. Those electronic packets
include millions of e-mails, Facebook pages, blog entries, and YouTube
(GOOG) videos; vast quantities of electronic transactions; plus an
ever-expanding universe of data that needs to be stored, sliced, diced, and
analyzed. 

[...]
Energy consumption in data centers emerged as a major issue in the past
couple of years. According to a January survey of its members by AFCOM, an
association of data center managers, 88.5% of them described energy
consumption as a serious or very serious concern, up from 36.1% five years
ago. "You're realizing the cost of all that power. You look for
opportunities to reduce costs, but now the cost of power is soaring," says
Sal Cefalu, a vice-president for data center operations at telecom giant
Verizon (VZ), which has 18 data centers nationwide. These days, for every $1
spent on computing equipment in data centers, an additional 50 cents is
spent each year to power and cool them. About half of the energy is for air
conditioning.

Since then, Microsoft has spent more than $2 billion building four gigantic
facilities-in Chicago, Dublin, San Antonio, and Quincy, Wash. Now it's
looking at locations overseas, including Iceland and Siberia. Its computing
needs have doubled each year for the past three years, and Microsoft expects
them to continue doubling each year for the foreseeable future.

Energy consumption is a major factor in Microsoft's planning. The company
has created what it calls a "heat map" of the globe that takes into account
35 factors in site selection, including cost and availability of power. A
group of scientists studies the latest advances in data center design and
computing efficiency. And Manos looks for local resources he can take
advantage of-such as water from a waste-treatment system that cools
computers at the new data center in San Antonio. 

Solutions to tech's energy crisis won't come easily. The largest data
centers can cost more than $200 million to construct and are expensive to
upgrade to the latest energy-saving technology.



Although more progress is needed, there have been some major advances in
data center energy conservation. In each case, the breakthroughs were the
result of scientists and others questioning the conventional wisdom in their
industries.

Even the traditionally slow-moving utility industry is showing signs of
surprising change. Take PG&E. Two years ago, after Bramfitt was handed the
job of designing conservation incentives for Northern California's tech
companies, he came up with a creative solution. He decided to provide
financial incentives to companies that decide to use what's known as
virtualization software. Without the software, each server computer
typically handles only one program at a time, and only a fraction of the
capacity is used. With virtualization software, many programs can be run on
a single computer.

The result is that managers can pack more programs onto each server, thus
burning less electricity and reducing the number of computers needed. Under
Bramfitt's incentive program, PG&E pays customers for every kilowatt-hour of
energy they save using the software.


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