Why go the petrol route rather than invest in batteries + a huge solar array or wind farm?
Are economies of scale not there yet for Amazon's data center power requirements?
Are economies of scale not there yet for Amazon's data center power requirements?
Question like this particular in a tech forum shows how much trouble we are in when actually dealing with environmental challenges.
The backup generator should rarely be used. The resources that went into the construction of the generator and tank is probably much less than would go into all those batteries.
The union of concerned scientists has done this for electric vehicles, which is really useful.
I'd also like to see it for low-hour-usage stuff, like tractors, lawnmowers, chainsaws, etc.
(Though, honestly, electric chainsaws are way, way better than medium sized gas ones, CO2 footprint be damned.)
~3kg/kg for fuel is really convenient because when combined with ICE efficiency, it's about 1kg/kWh
This https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-co2-emitted-manufac... says every kWh of NMC causes 2-16t of emissions. I'm sceptical this applies in 2022 given that $130 only buys 5t of coal, but we'll use it as indicative.
So for our generator we have 200P + 4E + 0C where P, E and C are power, total energy used and hours of capacity respectively.
If we assume 2C charge rate and 4000 cycle life, our battery is 2400 * max(P/2, C) + 2400/4000E
So E = 600C + 6/40E Assuming P is small compared to C, then any capacity used less than ~550 times in the 8 or so years it lasts is better off as a generator.
This is a function of the carbon intensity of battery though. At 200kg (https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/79316/2/Revi...) it's about 50.
Oh, they would be charged and that degrades them.
Also you can just buy more diesel and fill up the tanks but you can't do that with batteries.
Land for solar farms would be expensive and to be honest I'm not sure if the sunshine here would make them viable.
I don't know why data centres are nt being located in more remote regions of the small island, presumably there are network / technical reasons.
Diesel generators are for powering your data center tomorrow.
> huge solar array
> Ireland
Yeah, I figured there could be land mass availability issue.. maybe better to beam it from outer space or across the ocean from a different *-land?
I love the idea of a self-sustaining data center, hopefully someday we'll crack it in real life.
Maybe down to 20x with bifacial modules and relying on grid or backup for a few hours a day during bad days in winter. Eyeballing some photos in the US, including the parking and setbacks you might be able to cover 10% of the power in winter or 15% year average
In some areas you can probably put up a 3MW wind turbine or three. That would substantially lower the cost and size of storage. Max density for an entire area is only 10W/m^2 though so it's only another 4% assuming the available land looks like some random amazon datacenter I glanced at.
Still, 15% ish net annual is a dent for doing the extremely energy intensive thing without expanding the land use (assuming it's a good wind site).
I wonder if in some future where 70% efficient five junction panels are available whether it would make it easier to cool. You'd effectively be taking the sun heat and putting it inside so the outside would be cooler.