Google Confirms $600M South Carolina Data Center

miller60 writes "Google continues its furious data center building program in the Carolinas. Today the company announced a $600 million data center in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Google has already begun construction on a $600 million data center project in Lenoir, North Carolina, and is in the permitting process on another huge project in Richland County, South Carolina. Google's appetite for large tracts of land and cheap power are driving the site location process. Similar huge projects in central Washington are already transforming the tiny town of Quincy, where real estate prices have spiked, with open land fetching as much as 10 times its previous value."

If it lasts

[dorpus]

Will it be one of those weird corporate mega-projects that will get shut down as soon as its built? The corporation had no intention of using the facility, it was just building something for the sake of pleasing investors, getting tax breaks. This is routine business in IT -- Silicon Valley was full of billion-dollar empty campuses when I lived there.

Not just the cost of the power

[drew_92123]

keep in in that it's not just how much the power costs, but how much is available in the area... some areas simply don't have an extra 40MW to spare... Here in Quincy they will be pulling around 200MW within 3-5 years...

Re:Nice locations

[doormat]

Yea, but you're forgetting how close Quincy is to The Gorge [hob.com].

Re:We're not all hillbillies here...

[dr_strang]

I don't think this stereotyped dearth of intelligent and motivated people is a reality. I've lived and worked in Charleston for a long time in the technology sector and I've worked with and known many smart, creative and motivated people. There's a large software company here and a lot of advanced industry in the area as well. Just because the DC is in Berkeley County doesn't mean you have to live in a trailer out in the boondocks (but you can if you like)... It's right next to Charleston County as well as Dorchester County (Summerville).

Re:How many people does this require in the area?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, basically a data center is just a large bunch of servers organized nicely in racks with reliable power, cooling, and connectivity.

Obviously a few people are needed to maintain a data center, but in a good organization with standardized hardware, OS, and software platforms, and disciplined backup/restore procedures, remarkably few.

Google: SC and OR; Microsoft: Quincy, WA

[steveha]

The summary leaves me scratching my head because the Quincey project is a Microsoft data center, nothing to do with Google. Google is building a data center in The Dalles, Oregon, right on the Columbia River.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001262 [computerworld.com]

Quincy is near enough to the Columbia to have cheap hydro power, but I just looked at the map and it's not right on the Columbia like The Dalles. I wonder if Google will use water from the Columbia to help cool their data center; and I wonder what the plan is for the Quincy data center. (Ordinary air conditioning? That part of Washington is cold in the winter but hot in the summer.)

steveha

Re:Nice locations

[rayzat]

My bet it has more to do with states that offer massive tax breaks to businesses for moving in. I know North Carolina is famous for it, especially with the new Dell facility in Greensboro and Lenovo in RTP. The Dell deal was so good the state could have employed everyone hired by Dell for 11 years with the tax breaks and loans.

Re:How much does "power" cost?

[uab21]

500MW will cost you about one billion dollars (can you hear the pinky?). 200MW is likely not half the cost, so we are talking several hundred million dollars. Up front. Not including fuel and maintenance costs. There are some customers that have smaller generating capacity on site, but they generally have need for more than power, say for example, chemical refineries that can use the waste heat or steam, pressure for pumping a pipeline, or other uses.

Re:Maps

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stick with oatmeal... ya'll." You obviously have not lived here that long. Everyone south of Virgina knows it is "y'all", meaning "you all"

Re:How much does "power" cost?

[ScentCone]

At what point does it make sense to "make your own power"?

Umm... at what point does it ever make sense to build a datacenter that doesn't have the ability to run off its own power? South Carolina can experience some grid-pummeling weather, sometimes. If Google plans on having that facility up 24x7, there will be a small fleet of diesel generators and a small ocean of fuel sitting right there to keep it afloat in a pinch. Especially when what they're really up to isn't growing for more search, but growing to host web-based business apps and other stuff that they'll be telling people they can really depend on.

Now, just because you CAN run off your own power doesn't mean you want to do it for long, since it's very maintenance intensive.

Re:Maps

[FooAtWFU]

If grits are disgusting, you're eating them wrong. You need good hominy grits (I don't care for the yellow kind) that you cook, serve, and let solidify to about the consistency of mashed potatoes.... In fact, come to think of that, you can treat them fairly similarly to mashed potatoes in many respects... DON'T drown them in butter or syrup or salt them to death. That IS disgusting. Just a little little bit of butter, mmmaybe a sprinkling of raisins, and you have a good munchy substance to fill you up with a few carbohydrates, a bit of fiber, and some assorted other small-time nutrition stuff.

Its called a co-lo

[tacokill]

What you are talking about is a co-lo power station. Lots of plants have these. 3M in Austin, TX comes to mind as does TI in Dallas and Sherman, TX. I am quite certain Lockheed in Ft Worth has one as well. Basically -- they are pretty common.

Most the co-los I am familiar with are in the 10-20MW range. I've never seen one larger so I am guessing that is the point where "it makes sense".

Re:We're not all hillbillies here...

[Anonymous Coward]

They did fix up 52. The DC is going up in Mt. Holly, just on the outside of Goose Creek past the Alcoa plant.