Comments on: Eco data centres

By: Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 10:13:30 +0000

@Jim – happens to the best of us!

By: Jim Donovan

Jim Donovan — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 10:05:24 +0000

Thanks for explanation – brain wasn’t working yesterday!

By: Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 09:50:14 +0000

@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

By: robin

robin — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 09:39:52 +0000

google has been busy building solar-power energy farms right next to its datacentres.

for quite a while now.

By: maetl

maetl — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:28:21 +0000

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

By: Jim Donovan

Jim Donovan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:42:24 +0000

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?