Finally a green apple?
Apple forks out nearly $2bn for two ripe, green data centres
Apple is spending $1.9bn (£1.24bn) on a pair of big, green, environmentally friendly data centres in Ireland and Denmark. The fruity firm is splashing the cash (equivalent to €1.7bn) on two 160,000m2 facilities in County Galway, Ireland, and Denmark’s Jutland. The facilities will back-end the iTunes store, App Store, iMessage …
COMMENTS
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Monday 23rd February 2015 12:31 GMT Kristian Walsh
Re: WHAT Fields ?
The Liverpool supporters' song has different lyrics, and its chorus substitutes "Anfield Road" for "Athenry", so no...
However, you only need to assemble around ten Irish people at a sporting event involving Ireland before the probability of the original version of this song being sung reaches 1.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 12:38 GMT Kristian Walsh
Servicing that demand?
I wonder where they're going to find the generating capacity for this centre. The projected consumption will be equivalent to the current domestic demand of the Greater Galway area (about 160,000 people).
Ireland does not have a lot of spare generating capacity, and despite what you might think if you've ever "enjoyed" a walk along the Cliffs of Moher, the wind doesn't blow 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, which rules out the most available "green" option in this country.
I expect Apple to be sold pretty much all of the little "green" energy that's produced here, while the providers buy in nuclear-generated power from France and UK to meet the resulting shortfall. (I have no issue with nuclear power, btw; just find it ironic that this will be the likely outcome).
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Monday 23rd February 2015 13:56 GMT gnasher729
Re: Servicing that demand?
In the USA, Apple doesn't buy "green" energy (which as you observed is pointless because someone else has to buy non-green energy then), but builds massive solar farms, for example, supported by massive fuel cells so they can run in the night. I suppose they will do something similar in Ireland and Denmark and avoid buying energy from the outside as much as possible.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 15:19 GMT Kristian Walsh
Re: Servicing that demand?
If you made a panel that could convert squally drizzle to energy, Ireland's the place for it, but solar? no...
Wind is the only readily available renewable/"green" in Ireland, and that's not stable enough for a data centre. Power to serve the facility's base-line load has to come from somewhere, so I'm curious about whether they'll surprise the world and have their contractors address this reality with a technical solution (there are a few storage options, but they're expensive and untested at this scale), or go with routine and deploy the usual eco-hogwash of compensatory planting, carbon credits and technology funding.
I also can't help but think that when you scale applications up to the point where they're burning a Terawatt-Hour of electrical power every year to run, there's scope for optimising software to conserve energy, not just time or storage.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 15:54 GMT Corin
Re: Servicing that demand?
Perhaps they might be looking to set availability flags for each of their datacentres based on the local power / cooling requirements? Windy, cold day in Ireland? Get it doing all the work. A warm still evening with no solar, shift the load elsewhere.
While this might not solve all the problems it could certainly help out.
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Tuesday 24th February 2015 07:28 GMT Sealand
Re: Servicing that demand?
The location in Denmark is right next to the converter station on the HVDC connection to Norway and a major hub on the national grid. They'll have power allright.
Furthermore, the plan is to feed excess heat from the data centre into the already existing centralized heating infrastructure for the nearby towns. So they'll make money from the waste heat. Unless they're taxed into hell for it, of course, but it's been done before:
http://www.symbiosis.dk/en
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Monday 23rd February 2015 16:31 GMT Chris Evans
Is Data Centre energy requirements <> Apple Manufacturing?
I wonder if Apples Data Centre energy usage is greater or less than their subcontractor manufacturers usage per year. I Suspect Manufacturing will be considerably more. Green energy usage is to be applauded but I hope they will not be economical with the truth in their PR.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 17:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Is Data Centre energy requirements <> Apple Manufacturing?
Anytime anyone "goes green" (especially Apple) some spoilsport has to point out there are some non-green elements. Can't you be happy they're doing something positive, instead of whining that they aren't doing enough to suit you?
Even if their subs were 100% renewable you could make the argument about the aluminum they use, or the Gorilla glass, or the chips TSMC/Samsung fabs for them, and so on. NO ONE in the CE industry is anywhere remotely close to green when you consider the entire chain, but even Apple can exert very limited control of that chain.
They might be able to put some pressure on Foxconn, but their "manufacturing" is already pretty green as it is very labor intensive - the primary energy is probably keeping the lights on for all those people to see what they are doing assembling parts by hand! But further down the chain, they certainly can't tell TSMC to build a fab that runs on renewable energy to fab their chips, and insist that TSMC get their wafers from silicon boule suppliers running on renewable energy. Samsung may be a smaller player in the fab world, but again Apple couldn't tell them how to run their fab (anyway no one has ever even tried to build a fab that runs on 100% renewable energy)
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