Preparing for Climate Change through Energy Internet and eVehicles: Facebook to build server farm on edge of Arctic Circle

Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview

Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.

Linking renewable energy with high speed Internet using fiber to the home combined with autonomous eVehicles and dynamic charging where vehicle's batteries are charged as it travels along the road, may provide for a whole new "energy Internet" infrastructure for linking small distributed renewable energy sources to users that is far more robust and resilient to survive climate change than today's centralized command and control infrastructure. These new energy architectures will also significantly reduce our carbon footprint. For more details please see:

Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37

Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG

High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP

Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g

How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Facebook to build server farm on edge of Arctic Circle

[Here is a great example of how countries like Canada, Sweden, Norway, etc could be the hubs of the future global green Internet.
Canada, in particular has an abundance of “stranded” hydro electric, power such as run of the river turbines, that are not connected to the electric grid which would be ideal for data centers. Given Canada’s proximity to the US, one would think Canada would also be a natural location for data centers for companies like Facebook, etc. But the biggest problem for Canada, as opposed to Sweden or Norway is our lack of cost competitive fiber infrastructure due to foreign ownership restrictions and lack of a national vision for broadband – BSA]

Facebook is to build a multi-million 'mini town' on the edge of the Arctic circle to house all its computer servers, which would us as much electricity as a town of 50,000 people.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8850575/Facebook-to-build-server-farm-on-edge-of-Arctic-Circle.html

Luleå is situated at the northern tip of the Baltic Sea, just over 62 miles South of the Arctic Circle Photo: Alamy

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]."
Luleå is situated at the northern tip of the Baltic Sea, just over 62 miles South of the Arctic Circle.
Taking advantage of the rock bottom temperatures, Facebook plans to build three giant server halls covering an area the size of 11 football fields.
Even though they will rely on air cooling, keeping the servers humming will still require 120MW of power, enough to supply 16,000 detached homes, and costing some £45m a year.
These power needs will be met by renewable electricity generated by dams on the nearby Luleå river.
"The Luleå river produces twice as much electricity as the Hoover Dam does, so 50 per cent is exported from our region. There is a surplus of energy, and we can supply more data centres in this area easily," Engman said.
He said Facebook's engineers had also been attracted by the reliability of the local power grid, which has been built to supply the area's thriving iron, steel and paper industries, and also by Sweden's dense fibre-optic network.
"Sweden has the highest penetration in the world of fibre to households, so it is very well connected," said Engman. "You can get very easily through Finland into Eastern Europe and Russia."
Facebook becomes the latest to look to Northern Europe for server farms. Microsoft in 2007 said it was in discussions to build a sever farm in Siberia, but the deal has never materialised.
Google in 2009 bought a disused paper mill in Hamima in southern Finland, where it has been building a server farm, although it has been attracted more by the availability of cheap hydroelectric power.
Tom Furlong, Facebook's Director of Site Operations, is flying to Luleå today ahead of a press conference, when Facebook will give a full outline of its plans.
Mr Furlong's team looked at more than 40 sites in Sweden alone, before narrowing their list down earlier this year to a choice of Luleå and Östersund, a town in Central Sweden.
Mr Furlong led development on Facebook's first server farm in Prineville, Oregon, which also relies on air cooling, relying mainly on the town's chilly desert nights and cold winters, only using cooling during the summer days.

------
Green Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such as free broadband and electric highways. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro