Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 273 posts

Re: Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

#61

Post by Symmetry »

eroiusghs wrote: post #38
Symmetry wrote: post #24

I wonder to what extent Google can shift calculations around in time to take advantage of fluctuations in power generation. Serving cat videos might be something you do all the time but indexing the web and training Go AIs doesn't have to be a continuous process.

I'm pretty sure they can't turn the tap off when it comes to web indexing. And I also doubt the major cost for google is electric power for the machines doing the indexing - the power bill is probably negligible in the big picture of Googles business (if not I'll stort their stock)

It doesn't matter how the power bills compare to their overall bills, what mattes is how much power costs compare to hardware costs in terms of whether it makes sense to shift those things that don't have to be done in realtime.

Re: Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

#62

Post by downandout »

>"It’s good for the economy, good for business and good for our shareholders".

Let's be honest...it is not good for their shareholders. They are buying power at a significant premium and costing their shareholders money. It is a direct hit to the bottom line. This might be good for the environment - at the very least they are helping renewable energy companies get bank financing through purchase guarantees, which will advance the technologies being used and perhaps one day make them economically viable. But to say it's good for shareholders is disingenuous.

>"In some places, like Chile, Google said, renewables have at times become cheaper than fossil fuels."

I love all of the hedging that comes with any article that tries to paint renewables as economical. This sentence has holes a truck could drive through. It could literally mean that at one point, years ago, Chile had extremely high gas prices for a week and Google was amazed that their bill for that week was lower than it would have been with conventional power sources.

Re: Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

#63

Post by wilonth »

tomp wrote: post #23
gleglegle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you spend the capital on wind turbine hardware and infrastructure, the price of your energy generation is fairly constant. Price on energy supply from fossil fuels always depends on the fluctuating price of those fuels, which introduces uncertainties to future costs of energy.

Price = where supply and demand cross. If there's no wind, supply goes down, so with constant demand prices will go up! That's disregarding second-order effects (e.g. other providers marking up their prices to make bigger profits, or the wind-power provider increasing its prices in the future to make up for the lost income and provide a nice return on investment).

There are a lot of people selling and buying oil, thus changing the price every second. But there's no person looking at the wind and wager at what the "wind price" would be! You can never change your price if you wrote it in the CONTRACT, Google would be stupid if they don't cover it in the contract and let their Wind Farm builder change the price, because it makes zero sense.

Re: Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

#64

Post by syncsynchalt »

metaphorm wrote: post #28

they're doing this financially, not through infrastructure building. the plan is to purchase equivalent dollar value of credits from renewable electricity suppliers. this highlights a significant issue: grid power is fungible and power sources are indistinct from the end-user's point of view. is there some kind of auditing authority that can actually guarantee that the money spent is actually going towards electrical…

There's a REC market, and "production" of those certificates is tied 1:1 to input into the grid, which is metered and monitored by the applicable interconnect (as a necessity for its operation).

When you purchase these renewable energy credits you're essentially bidding up a bonus for producers of the appropriate energy, above and beyond the price they got for the electricity itself. Google has entered some long-term contracts for the acquisition of these credits from renewable energy providers, which in the short term bids up the price of credits for everyone else and in the longer term leads to more and larger renewable energy producers.

Also note that Google isn't doing this entirely via the credits markets — it's also reducing its usage and where applicable is working with energy providers to create nearby generation.

Re: Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

#65

Post by tylercubell »

> “In my mind it’s a P.R. gimmick,” said Chris Warren, vice president of communications at the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank in Washington supported largely by donations from individuals and companies in the fossil fuel industry. “If they think they can actually support themselves with wind and solar panels, they should connect them directly to their data centers.”

I love how the author throws in a disclaimed quotation from a big oil Luddite to help reinforce the message of the article. It's a two-fold sales tactic.

1. Discredit the opposition.

2. Tell the buyer what the opposition will say, after already convincing them of the benefits, so they're prepared to defend what they're buying thereby reinforcing their beliefs.

I'm not implying that the article is wrong, but it's something we should be aware of.

Re: Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

#66

Post by philipkglass »

revelation wrote: post #54
hannob wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Solar it obviously depends on a lot of factors (where you put them, which technology, where it is produced), but it's in the range of 0-4 years, depending on which study you look at. Common lifetime is ~20-30 years. See e.g. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/downloads/pdf-files/aktuell... http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf http://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/kev/index.php

Feels like I've been quoted a 20-30 years lifetime for solar panels for 10 years straight now. They degrade, but they don't break. Do we have more data now? Because I think solar panels will easily do 50 years with >50% of original output.

There's a mixture of degradation mechanisms at work. Some of them, like light induced degradation to the actual cells, can reduce output but can't really destroy the system. Other mechanisms really do "break" the module, e.g. backsheet delamination, accidental or malicious breaking of cover glass, or extended partial shading that leads to thermal runaway that can melt solder and/or put holes in the backsheet. As soldered connections age, weaken, and fail they can lead to thermal runaways that destroy neighboring cells too.

I believe that there are already some panels in the field that can last 50 years, and that it will become more common in the future, but 20-30 years is the safe, evidence-backed estimate for now.

Re: Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

#67

Post by parhurs »

downandout wrote: post #62

>"It’s good for the economy, good for business and good for our shareholders ". Let's be honest...it is not good for their shareholders. They are buying power at a significant premium and costing their shareholders money. It is a direct hit to the bottom line. This might be good for the environment - at the very least they are helping renewable energy companies get bank financing through purchase guarantees, which wi…

Well, it all depends on the definition of good. Shareholders are people too, and for now, live on planet Earth and are thus affected by Google's energy usage. Also, from a economic perspective, the good can come from e.g. brand acceptance (and other indirect sources).

Re: Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

#70

Post by edblarney »

deegles wrote: post #45

Google is ahead of the game here. Other tech companies also are moving to renewables but they're not at 100% yet (IIRC). The key point is that as cloud computing becomes commoditized and people build tools to quickly transfer from one cloud provider to another, the profit margin will become smaller and smaller until energy costs dominate the cost to provide a service. It is already the case that a machine will use mo…

"So, whoever has the cheapest power will be able to provide cheapest services"

While it's a good point, I don't entirely agree with it.

More apt: renewables are not cheap. They are very expensive in almost all parts of the Western world.

Post reply on HN