Google Campus to Become Solar-powered 394
prostoalex writes "Reuters is reporting that Google is equipping its headquarters with a solar panel 'capable of generating 1.6 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 1,000 California homes.' This will make Google's Mountain View campus the largest solar-powered office complex in the United States."
Does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does this mean... (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently they believe the sun shines out their ass, so these panels will actually be mounted into the flooring - weather be damned...
Good, but not a huge deal (Score:5, Interesting)
That's great, I am really proud of them for using an alternative energy source (especially in such a sunny area) but most of their energy usage is those data centers and servers, not their employees. They purposefully did not give a % of total energy saved because it probably would have been on the order of 0.1-5%, which would have revealed the ridiculous amount of energy they actually use.
Re:Good, but not a huge deal (Score:4, Insightful)
-matthew
Re:Good, but not a huge deal (Score:4, Insightful)
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Also, it's like people who drive hybrid cars. True, the sum of all hybrid cars have little effect on the total problems of pollution and foreign oil. However, sometimes as a human you say "I don't want to be a part of the problem. I may not be able to change others' minds, but at least I'm not contributing to the worlds problems".
And it's google so I'm sure they'll put a bunch of engineers on the problem and come up with a solution no one's ever thought of. Like
Re:Good, but not a huge deal (Score:5, Funny)
I mean the "not being part of the problem" bit - I'm a bit concerned about your combination of tofu, handjobs and watermelon.
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NY Times story on it. [nytimes.com]
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Oh, the implications! (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how easy the transition will be for them to leave Linux behind in favor of a sun [sun.com] powered setup.
Oh yes. I went there.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster... (Score:2)
Now that's hot!
Just one? (Score:2)
Re:Just one? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just one? (Score:5, Funny)
Two words: Duct Tape.
Re:Just one? (Score:5, Funny)
Would that be to fix it or to shut up the person who revealed the problem?
Re:Just one? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just one? (Score:5, Funny)
So does the universe explode if you spray duct tape with WD-40?
Re:Just one? (Score:5, Funny)
But, before we use any power tools, let's take a moment to talk about shop safety. Be sure to read, understand, and follow all the safety rules that come with your power tools. Knowing how to use your power tools properly will greatly reduce the risk of personal injury. And remember this: there is no more important safety rule than to wear these -- safety glasses and a funny hat.
I have with me a brand new roll of duct tape, and a fresh can of WD-40. Next to me is my trusty lab assistant, Timmy, who will be assiting in this experiment.
I am now going to rip a piece of duct tape approximately six inches long off of the roll and have Timmy hold it.
(I rip tape and hand it to Timmy)
Ok, Timmy, hold the tape tight, I am going to commence spraying the tape.
(I spray the tape)
Ok, Timmy... continue to hold it as we observe what happens.
(wait 5 seconds)
Timmy has told me it is starting to shake and do funny things...
OMG! A black hole has opened where the tape was. Timmy, hold on to it... this is the crucial moment...
Uh, oh! I think we are going to need another Timmy! It looks like Timmy was consumed by the black hole.
Luckily, I was prepaired for this. I will now throw into the black hole a few New Kids on the Block tapes and a copy of the movie Hobgobblins. This should cause the blackhole to enter "terminal suckage phase" and end its existance.
(I throw in the NKotB tapes and the copy of Hobgobblins. The black hole immediately ceases to be)
Well, it looks like yet another experiment has occured.
Tune in next week when I will show everyone how to build a perpetual energy generator using a cat and a slice of buttered toast.
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Commendable (Score:2)
Re:Commendable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Commendable (Score:5, Funny)
So, they'd be replacing New Mexico with something useful? And the catch is?
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http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/14/13232
and
http://news.com.com/2300-1030_3-6089390-5.html [com.com]
Seems like there is a lot of hydroelectric power in Oregon.
Re:Commendable (Score:4, Informative)
My guess is the picked the location for the nearby/cheap power, low labor costs, cheap land, and relatively low corporate taxes in Oregon. Plus there's great windsurfing just 20 miles down the river.. and it's a pretty place.
How big is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
The google campus doesnt have that many buildings, I have this weird image in my mind of all their buildings completely covered by solar panels.
Re:How big is it? (Score:5, Funny)
3nL4rG3 Y0uR S014R p4N3Ls!!!
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Did you specify its virtual size to differentiate it from the solar panels' virtual size?
Re:How big is it? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yawn! (Score:3, Informative)
OK, to be serious, this is a wonderful leap. Granted, it took a company as flush with cash and as well organized as Google to make the switch, but even if they're much better suited to do so, they can at least be an example to strive for.
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You do realize that they are probably losing money on this in exchange for the publicity, don't you?
-matthew
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How expensive does oil/coal etc have to get before this saves money? In the short term this may cost money, but it does after all provide a renewable and free resource.
It is just like double glazed windows, for the first few years the total cost is greater, but you are always saving money and after some years the saving has outweighed the cost of replacing the windows. This break even comes much sooner when you factor in the always increasing
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No, that is just when the warranty runs out. Since it has only been 52 years since the modern Si photovoltaic cell was invented, the life of solar cells is not really known. The oldest working communications satellite appears to be ATS-3 (from a quick google search) and is 39 years old. - so they can work at least that long.
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1. Replacement is suggested after 25 years, if (and only if) space is at a premium. Over the lifetime, output drops off slowly. After 25 years, output is typically around 85-90% of the original output. If you have the space for it, you just add more panels to make up for
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What view? I was only making sure you were aware that this move by Google probably wasn't a great investment beyond the publicity they'd get for it. It makes me wonder if perhaps they have gone a little too far. I mean, the public has a short attention span. Google only going to be be able to play this (expensive) card so many times.
Google is saving money on power by buildi
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Eating their own dog food? (Score:2)
And yes, I'm too lazy to google for the facts, it's 10pm for me and I'm about to have dinner.
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Crazy (Score:2)
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This is obviously a sign that you should submit it, and it'll make the front page tomorrow!
Microsoft's response (Score:2, Funny)
Ballmer unleashed....yes, a campus run on fear
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Something seems odd about installing solar panels in a city famous for grey overcast skies, but the panels work nonetheless.
Typical response (Score:3, Funny)
Hours (Score:5, Funny)
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Nawww, at night they just turn the lights on to power the solar
victory is ours! (Score:2)
This is clearly the result of giving a cabal of nerds 130 billion dollars. Also, it's merely an order of magnitude short of the 1.21 gigawatts necessary for time travel.
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This is clearly the result of giving a cabal of nerds 130 billion dollars. Also, it's merely an order of magnitude short of the 1.21 gigawatts necessary for time travel.
Nice arithmetic. Try three orders of magnitude. Please surrender your nerd credentials as you exit.
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I'll see to that. We'll see how silly you look when I use my delorean to go back in time and prevent myself from making that error...
Now (Score:3, Funny)
Install panels for data centers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming it's more like 80MW of power they consume (equivalent to ~60K homes), I wonder if there'd even be enough high quality solar panels to offset a majority of this power consumption? I guess it makes more sense for them to start building wind farms near their out-of-the-way GooglePlexes. Some 5MW wind turbines are being tested today - hmmm
BTW: here's a link to a more detailed article on the subject: SF Gate - Google sets sight on solar [sfgate.com]
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Solar power is extremely expensive, and power is generally the single largest cost in operating a data center (bandwidth, server leases, and even the cost of A-grade real estate in an urban core like New York City are small compared to power costs). Real world data center managers are interested in (1) more reliable power (no sags, no blackouts, no brownouts) (2) less expensive power. Emp
Payback? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Payback? (Score:5, Funny)
What an age we live in.
Cost Savings.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cost Savings.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cost savings, cost savings, cost saving... This is why humanity's lifespan as we know it will be much shorter than it could've been. It should not be just about the money and cost saving, but about nature saving, resource saving, human saving.
Any company who deploys renewable energy sources as a partial or total replacement, gets my support.
And, this news is proof for one more thing: geeks should have more money, they can do the coolest things.
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Cost is often a reasonably good indicator of resource requirements. Scarce resources put costs up while common ones drive it down.
Is this called 'late adoption'? (Score:3, Informative)
I love google but I call "Yippe Skip" (Score:3, Insightful)
It happens when your rich, I suppose.
Re:I love google but I call "Yippe Skip" (Score:5, Informative)
Solar power is simply a small way from being price competitive with established power generation. It is a viable energy source. It is not a net energy loss.
What this takes. (Score:5, Insightful)
OK. One square meter of solar panel is typically good for 130 watts at peak, but only about 655 watt hours per day, or 27 watts averaged over 24 hours. In other words, the average power is about 20% of the peak. So, to get 1.6 megawatts average power, you need about 60,000 square meters of panel, or an area 245 meters square. This is about two football fields of area, or three Wal-Mart Supercenter roofs.
A typical price for a good solar panel today is about $1000 for 160 watts peak. So to get 1.6 * 5 = 8 megawatts peak power, you need 50,000 of those panels, or about $50 million worth of panels. Batteries, inverters, and installation extra. (I suspect that Google is talking about 1.6MW of peak capacity, but that's a phony number to compare to other energy sources that can run 24 hours a day.)
There are already data centers that draw 30 megawatts continuous. That would take about a billion dollars worth of solar panels to power.
And by power plant standards, 30MW is dinky. Commercial power plants today run around a gigawatt.
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Even the MSRP is only $993. $5/W is usually a close enough price for these panels, less if you buy in bulk.
I agree with most of the rest of your post, however they probably are not adding additional batteries (most likely whatever they are running already has a UPS/generator system in place).
possibly $300,000 each for a 500kW inverter [www.ept.ca] if you have 16 of them that's only $4.8 million
So lets say $40mil for panels, $10mil for inverters, cables, installation
Re:What this takes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What this takes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google will realize tax writeoffs for the whole thing, a one-time tax credit (or perhaps they will find a way to make the tax credit apply at a lower amount over multiple years), and above and beyond that they will see significantly reduced site power bills.
The next thing they need to be looking at is average power consumption per employee and find more efficient ways to work. Putting a PC on every desk is wasteful. One fat LTSP server per department (or for multiple departments!) and a thin client on every desk would be more than enough for most people. I did this at another shop a few years ago and it worked great. It's a real shame that most people are stuck in a rut and won't try a new way of doing things .
OK it's not a new way of doing things. The idea itself is really very old. But the technology has caught up with the idea, and it's now a very workable idea, unlike the old X terminal toasters of the early 1990's running on 10Mbps ethernet with lousy graphics chipsets and poor performance, with a couple of dozen people sharing a SPARCstation 5 (not enough machine for one person, let along 12).
Spy sats and black helicopters (Score:2)
Solar Power? (Score:2, Funny)
Nice but .... (Score:2)
Re:Great! (Score:3, Insightful)
Should carry this over to other campuses (Score:3, Insightful)
Checklist (Score:2)
Independent network? Check-ish.
Solar powered? Check.
Super-human AI. ????
ALL HAIL OMNI-SUPER-GOOGLE-MIND-BRAIN!
1.6MW enough for 1,000 california homes? (Score:3, Informative)
Don't people in California have airconditioning?
The smallest contract my electricity company (EDF) will sell is 3kW, and nobody uses that 'cos your main circuit breaker would blow if you turned on a couple of electric heaters and a microwave.
As far as I can remember I've got an 18kW contract, so this thing would be able to power around 100 people like me.
(Personaly I'll stick with my nice PWR thankyou).
Google too powerful? (Score:5, Funny)
I think I heard a story about it once...
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Re:Google too powerful? (Score:5, Funny)
Technician 1: I got it! We can just shut off the power!
Technician 2: No such luck. It's solar powered.
Technician 1: Solar power! When will people learn?
Re:Google too powerful? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Long Term Benefit? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the boys from They Might Be Giants summed it up best.
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
Yo ho, it's hot, the sun is not
A place where we could live
But here on Earth there'd be no life
Without the light it gives
We need its light
We need its heat
We need its energy
Without the sun, without a doubt
There'd be no you and me
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
The sun is hot
It is so hot that everything on it is a
gas: iron, copper, aluminum, and many others.
The sun is large
If the sun were hollow, a million
Earths could fit inside. And yet, the
sun is only a middle-sized star.
The sun is far away
About 93 million miles away, and that's why it
looks so small.
And even when it's out of sight
The sun shines night and day
The sun gives heat
The sun gives light
The sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun's
Atomic energy
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge
atom-smashing machine. The heat and light of
the sun come from the nuclear reactions of
hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
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Re:Long Term Benefit? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Long Term Benefit? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Long Term Benefit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't enough of it end up reducing the effectiveness of the panels?
Re:Long Term Benefit? (Score:5, Funny)
Just filter it out.... (Score:3, Funny)
This is what the not-operator is for.
No bird shit?
-"Bird Shit"
simple as that.
No bird shit or tree sap?
-"Bird Shit"|"Tree Sap"
See how easy it is?
What, exactly, do you think those server farms do all day?
I think a "..duh.." is in order here.
Economic, not environmental. (Score:4, Informative)
If you measure it as "payback of the purchase price", it could be as little as 2.5 years, depending on the specific technology.
If you measure it as ERoEI, it's generally acknowledged by everyone except die-hard solar power advocates that the ratio of Energy Returned over Energy Input for solar is less than 1, unless you use very very recent strained Silicon-based technology, which barely hit break-even earlier this year.
If you use thin film technology the purchase price payback grows to 4 years, and the Payback ERoEI drops to about 0.8.
There's also the little problem of there being a shortage of polycrystaline Silicon, from which solar cells are made. This shortage is expected to last through at least 2008, since it takes about 3 years to build a manufacturing plant for it, and that's what would have to happen to reduce the cost overhead.
So for right now, any decision to switch to solar by Google is going to be an economic one, rather than an environmental one.
This makes sense, since Larry Page and Sergey Brin are invested in a Solar power startup, Nanosolar http://www.techreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17
Since Nanosolar is a thin-film photovoltaic shop, we are looking at a longer economic payback time; their output capacity after their plant is built will be 430MW of cells per year, so this will eaither be the first run cells, or it will be about a day and a half of cell output at their full production capacity.
FWIW, the 1.6MW capacity is going to put them at ~1/500th of the total US Solar capacity, which as of this year is at 927MW, for just this one installation. Comparatively, total US solar capacity is only 85% of the output of one of the two reactors at Diablo Canyon (1087MW each), while total US wind power capacity is 10,000MW and growing by 3,000MW in 2006 alone, according th AWEA (the American Wind Energy Association).
-- Terry
Re:Economic, not environmental. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Economic, not environmental. (Score:5, Interesting)
There still seems to be a popular belief that PV systems cannot 'pay back' their energy investment. The data from recent studies show however that although for present-day systems the EPBT can still be high, it is generally well below the expected life time of a PV system
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what is the ER/EI for power from a power plant? seams you must add in the cost of building power lines, maintaining them, sacrificing land, and how much more copper,etc is used for conventional power than the solar power? Now thanks to varius government enties picking up much of that infrustrucute cost (paid out of taxes, not covered by those paid in your power bill) you can't base the cost just on whats cheaper. Don't forget abou
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Re:make a little, share a little... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure google will share/sell what they don't use.
Goatse.cx (mod down, maybe?) (Score:2)
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