back to article 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 …

  1. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Childcatcher

    And each datacenter blows out mega-BTU's daily, directly contributing to global warming. Even when the east coast of the US disappears, they'll still deny it.

    Keep tweeting kids.

    1. ratfox

      I recently saw an interesting estimate that Bitcoin miners alone consume more electricity than all of Google.

    2. Mark Exclamation

      It used to be that manufacturing companies consumed the most power, but at least they produced something tangible. These days, it's bit-barns that consume all the power, and all they produce is hot air!

      1. RatX

        Case in point.

  2. Stevie

    Bah!

    Makes sense. Put something with massive cooling requirements in one of the hottest places in the country.

    Next they'll slam in a few solar panels and declare the whole thing "green".

    1. rcxb Silver badge

      Re: Bah!

      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

  3. beep54
    Facepalm

    Iceland would make sense. Northern Canada would make sense. Texas, Nevada....whaaa????

    1. ratfox
      Boffin

      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.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hey, it's Texas. Just build one right over an oil well.

  4. Eddy Ito

    It makes Amazon HQ2 sense. It's always about incentives and tax breaks for the company. Maybe they'll power it with cow farts.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      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.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ".. more bit barns in Texas than you can shake a stick at"

    Interesting concept. I imagine if I were to approach a bit barn waving a stick I would find myself looking down the barrel of a security guard's gun pretty sharpish.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ".. more bit barns in Texas than you can shake a stick at"

      Nawh, it'll be a Texas-sized stun cannon. "Come and take it"

  6. RyokuMas
    Joke

    I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure...

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