Soon Google will have more bit barns in Texas than you can shake a stick at: Second facility planned for Ellis County Google has identified a parcel of land for its second bit barn in Ellis County, Texas, even though the first one is still months away from completion. The Chocolate Factory wants to build in Red Oak, a city of about 13,000 people, located 20 minutes south of Dallas and 30 minutes southeast of Fort Worth. According to the …
Data centres don't need the cryogenic temperatures they once did. 30C/85F is a common operating temperature for server these days.
And evaporative cooling of data centres is quite common now. In locations with consistently low humidity, you can avoid the energy and expense of compression cycle cooling and use just a fraction as much power during the hottest parts of the hottest days... the rest of the time (at night, in autumn, winter etc) they can easily use outside air without adding water.
Facebook's data centre tour is a good explanation of the technologies going into data centres these days:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZUX3n2yAzY
It is actually more efficient when data centers are relatively close to the users. That pretty much kills it for Iceland.
That said, the days are long gone when data centers operated at frigid temperatures and spent half their power supply on air conditioning. Nowadays, they are unbearably hot, and spend less than 15% on cooling. Choosing a cooler climate to save on cooling is less important than choosing a location with cheap energy to save on the actual bit crunching.
In this case it's more about cheap power, cheap land, easy planning permission and close to big population markets.
It doesn't hurt to have the 2nd biggest state in your pocket when it comes to congress.
Saving a few million on property taxes is noise compared to the process of getting anything built in Ca.
Nawh, it'll be a Texas-sized stun cannon. "Come and take it"
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