

Ask HN: Which is better. A server farm somewhere hot or somewhere cold? - ed209

Two recent articles caught my eye today. Both about new server farms being built/upgraded.<p>One is somewhere hot (North Carolina, Apple) [1]<p>The other is somewhere cold (Sweden, Facebook) [2]<p>Hot, (assuming more solar energy available) benefits are increased power from a solar plant but the farm requires more cooling. Cold, requires less cooling therefore less energy.<p>It's interesting [to me at least] because it raises the question of efficiency. i.e. do you build something that requires loads of power - but who cares 'cos we got tonnes of renewable energy... or do you try an require a lot less energy even though hydroelectric is not damaging to the environment the more you produce.<p>[1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/10/apple-building-171-acre-solar-panel-farm-to-power-nc-data-center.ars<p>[2] http://www.techiespider.com/2011/10/27/facebook-build-server-farm-northern-sweden-arctic-circle/
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brudgers
Maiden, North Carolina is temperate, not warm.

December 2010 data for Ashville, NC:

    
    
       Average Daily High = 38.4F 
       Average Daily Low = 22.8F
       High = 50F
       Low = 11F
       1087 degree days of heating
       10.8" of snow, 7" maximum depth.
    

Source: <http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=gsp>

Data for Greenville Spartenburg for December 2010 is similar but with less
snowfall locally.

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mooism2
If your data centre uses less energy than your renewable energy source, then
you can push the excess out onto the grid. Similarly, if you use more than you
can produce, you have to pull the deficit from the grid. Either way, the less
energy you use, the more energy has to be generated elsewhere. So energy
efficiency still matters.

Against that, there are transmission losses. If your data centre in a cold
dark place is powered by a solar array in a hot sunny place, you need less
energy to spend on cooling, but you have less energy to spend because more
energy will be lost in transmission. I don't know how they balance out.

(And if you have enough clients in the hot place who want low latency, it
makes sense to put the data centre in the hot place even if it's less energy
efficient.)

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willpower101
I'd venture a guess that the solar energy provided wouldn't even cover a
quarter of the energy cost required to cool a data center.

I'd go on to say that the energy coefficient between 35 Deg N and 55 Deg N
probably isn't enough to offset the equation significantly.

As such I think that removing heat more efficiently via naturally cold
climates would have a greater impact on bottom line. Check out wikileaks cave-
based data centers in old Swedish nuclear bunkers.
[http://bitshare.tumblr.com/post/2383169988/the-wikileaks-
ser...](http://bitshare.tumblr.com/post/2383169988/the-wikileaks-server-cave)
(Sweden's bandwidth to the rest of the world also blows ours away.)

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Joakal
An ambiguous question that does not consider the requirements.

eg Latency vs cost.

Being based Antarctica can be very cheap and fast. But there's poor
connections.

It's like a PHP vs C++ argument. While C++ is secure, efficient and takes
longer to implement while PHP is cheaper, faster to implement for MVP.

tl;dr: Doing science with servers in bulk? Better in cold. Doing business?
Better more closer to customers that tend to be in warm places.

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asharp
Either way, if you are using renewables, you are going to be using a baseload
renewable power source (geothermal/hydro) that isn't going to care about
temperature.

What you want is access to cheap electricity and cheap cooling. Whatever
minimises TCO is where you want to be.

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emnl
I know that electricity in northern Sweden is relatively (very) cheap due to
the effective water power plants in the area. They work all year and I can
imagine that they are cheap compared to solar panels. So: cheap electricity +
neutral cooling = happy zuck.

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tobylane
A kind-of third option is what I believe Google have done, near a
hydroelectric plant (that used to be used for smelting?), and near a city with
a major internet exchange.

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chris_dcosta
Why couldn't you place it in a cold windy place? Solar is not the only
renewable energy.

