Infrastructure Opportunities, The Return
In 2007 I wrote a quick post about infrastructure opportunities.
I’ve also wondered previously about opportunities with cheap electricity, seems The Google and other huge server farms are spending more on electricity than on hardware, hello Hydro Québec joint venture?
Found this in September 2011:
The facility will run on geothermal and hydroelectric power – in Iceland, all electricity is from renewable energy sources. The project was commissioned by the UK start-up Verne Global, itself a data hosting company, which plans to use Iceland’s cheap power to undercut rival European offerings.
—World’s first zero-carbon data centre to be built in Iceland
And then this just last week:
The enormous server farm facility in Luleå, northern Sweden, to be announced officially on Thursday morning, is the first time that the social networking giant has chosen to locate a server farm outside the US.
“The climate will allow them to just use only air for cooling the servers,” said Mats Engman, chief executive of the Aurorum Science Park, which is leading the push to turn the city into a ‘Node Pole’, luring in other international computing giants.
“If you take the statistics, the temperature has not been above 30C [86F] for more than 24 hours since 1961. If you take the average temperature, it’s around 2C [35.6F].”
—Facebook to build server farm on edge of Arctic Circle
See, now that would have made for an interesting Plan nord.
[Update on Nov. 7th] Thought so, seems they are on it (FR) but Hydro didn’t find the idea interesting enough 3 years ago. Merci Josée pour le tip.
