Google shakes up US utility with green power tariff Google is using its giant pile of money to try and change how utility companies work, so that more businesses can buy their power from renewable sources. As part of a $600m expansion of its North Carolina data center, Google's local utility provider Duke Energy has pledged to develop a renewable energy tariff for Google and …
Translation:
"What prevents Google from implementing load balancing to balance out their peak uses of energy and make the most use of renewables?"
At least, I think that's what was meant. And I don't know the answer if it is what was meant.
Rather than built their own the way Apple did, Google is holding true to their progressive left centralized socialistic origins by demanding The Government do it for them.
At least they are being true to themselves. But the problem is that they are trying to foist their philosophy on others. Ethanol comes to mind as another faulty concept foisted on the world. Supposed to be "green" but is worse than doing nothing.
How are they demanding the government do it for them? They basically prodded Duke Energy, which while government regulated, is a private company. If Duke really didn't want to do it, they were under no obligation to do so. But doing so they benefit from the positive publicity that Google is getting on this, and that Apple got for doing all the power generation on site (using solar panels and waste gas from a nearby landfill using Bloom fuel cells)
Actually Apple's plans probably required more government cooperation than Google's, because they had to deal with whoever operates the landfill (assuming it isn't privately owned)
"Rather than built their own the way Apple did, Google is holding true to their progressive left centralized socialistic origins by demanding The Government do it for them."
Duke Energy is owned by the US Govt?
I did not know this.
Oddly I was under the impression that the US govt did not own any energy providers.
Something about it not being within the remit of govt to do this IIRC.
Always amused to hear an American talk about socialism as if you knew what the word meant.
JS - You should visit America! The big mid-20th century multi-state hydropower projects of the West were federally-funded and are still federally owned. They are run by separate administrations (e.g. the Bonneville Power Administration in the Pacific NW), but are part of the federal government.
The TVA is another big government-owned power company, in the Appalachians.
Because the EPA hasn't (to my knowledge) done a subsequent report on data centers. (The 2011 figure comes from the 2007 EPA report.) Other organizations have produced other reports since, but either the methodology has been wobbly, the dataset has been meager, or the report has been done at the behest of a vendor with an apparent bias toward data centers. Big brother because EPA is big gub'ment.
If Greenpeace and Google were really serious about going green then all these two groups have to look at is all the wasted heat that is generated every day and escaping into the air at factories that either burn fuel to operate or factories that produce energy. Flaring off is a good example as are plants such as they have in Canada that produce steam to force Bitumen to the surface in Alberta. Coal fired plants release vast amounts of energy (waste) in the air.
That wasted heat could and the technology is here today to produce more power from the waste that is escaping.
That isn't how thermodynamics works. Modern coal plants get almost as close to the carnot efficiency as our metallurgical limits allow us to get.
"Heat" is energy, it's true, but to be useful it has to be at a temperature sufficiently above the ambient. Once the temperature of the exhaust gases are close enough to ambient, the efficiency with which work can be extracted becomes so low that the returns of adding additional steps to try to capture it become prohibitively expensive. Coal is expensive enough to make that point very late in the game, but pretty much the only thing you can do with the remaining waste heat from a coal plant is heat an apartment building... and who wants to live that close to a coal-fired power plant?
It's already been done here in Australia by the Greens political party, to push (force) increased utilisation of "green" power sources.
It increases use of otherwise unattractive (expensive) green power sources, at the "very minor" consequence of raising **EVERYONE'S** power bills two-three fold, all the while completely forgetting to mention that said green sources cannot possibly replace existing baseline coal/gas supplies, which will continue to take the brunt of the load.
Saving the world? My arse.
The only thing they're interested in saving is their financial bottom line.
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