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Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

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Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#61

Post by snazz »

dkarp wrote: post #56
mabbo wrote: post #54

(Off-topic, but regarding this site) Am I crazy or is this website capturing down-button clicks and ignoring them? I typically use down and up to slowly scroll as I read an article. This page is driving me nuts.

bizarrely it's only the down button (not the up button)

It appears to have something to do with this code (paste the URL into DevTools when you're on the site). webpack:///./frontend/js/trackers/keyboard-tracker.js

There's one other keyboard event listener, but it doesn't appear to do that.

Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#62

Post by icebraining »

Seirdy wrote: post #41
ben509 wrote: post #29

Optimizing for this is a perfect task to throw at a simple market. Especially because actually reworking the software to take advantage of resources at different times is often going to require a decent amount of work by engineers. One way to do it would be assign various jobs a value, (which could be dynamic e.g. it might get more important as information becomes stale) and have them bid on compute power. You could…

On a smaller scale, you could do what Low Tech Magazine [0] does and actually have downtime when sunlight is low. Since this doesn't happen too often and users can just save articles (with RSS, email newsletters, etc.), websites like this can just be powered by a single computer, solar cell, and small battery in the owner's Barcelona apartment. Thanks to small static pages and tiny dithered images, the site is almost…

Actually, I'd say LTM's is the car, and Google's approach is public transport.

LTM's approach required producing, assembling and shipping a full 2GHz/1GB computer, plus PV, PV-controller and router, all to serve a single site. And it's even turned off some of the time!

Google, on the other hand, is more like a fleet of trains; sure, each one is a honkin' beast, but it also transports thousands of passengers/sites at once, possibly millions in its lifetime.

The bicycle analogy doesn't really work, because a bicycle is just a performance attachment to the real vehicle: the human.

Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#63

Post by Nasrudith »

supernova87a wrote: post #53

While the story is very positive and encouraging -- Unfortunately an unintended side consequence of these kinds of efforts (unless you're very conscientious about maintaining the correct incentives, generally through pricing) is sometimes that the gains in energy efficiency and savings are clawed back by an increase in overall energy consumption because it's gotten effectively cheaper to operate for the same number o…

If it is still an improvement in both end usage and utility isn't that letting the perfect be the enemy of the good?

LEDS have to be one of the worst possible example for claims of induced demand as a bad thing given that the efficency gains outstripped proliferation of additional always on devices and a cellphone per person.

While Induced Demand may exist it too has its saturating limits of diminished returns.

Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#64

Post by ar0 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #28
ar0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks like a good opportunity for an (at least tangentinally related) big shout-out to your great electricityMap ( https://www.electricitymap.org/map ) website! I wish there would be more countries covered (in particular Switzerland), but I guess you depend on the live data being provided in these countries.

Disclaimer: Not affiliated with Tomorrow. Unfortunately, the crux is data availability and reliability from system/transmission operators. For example, there is no online data available for the Northern Territory of Australia, so you can't build a parser for it. Some data providers have frequent data outages for different regions (ENTSOE), as there is no SLA or contractual obligation for providing data reliably. If y…

I think the problem is that something is wrong with the ENTSO-E feed for solar and wind power in Switzerland. Data is given as "N/A" on their webpage, too, and it states that: "Due to changes to a different primary data provider, no data is published for Production Type Solar and Wind Onshore. The missing data will be published retrospectively by 28th Mar 2019."

Given that the 28th Mar 2019 has long passed, I am not very optimistic that the feed will be restored anytime soon... and unfortunately I don't know of any other (e.g. primary) public source, either.

Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#65

Post by toomuchtodo »

ar0 wrote: post #64
toomuchtodo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: Not affiliated with Tomorrow. Unfortunately, the crux is data availability and reliability from system/transmission operators. For example, there is no online data available for the Northern Territory of Australia, so you can't build a parser for it. Some data providers have frequent data outages for different regions (ENTSOE), as there is no SLA or contractual obligation for providing data reliably. If y…

I think the problem is that something is wrong with the ENTSO-E feed for solar and wind power in Switzerland. Data is given as "N/A" on their webpage, too, and it states that: "Due to changes to a different primary data provider, no data is published for Production Type Solar and Wind Onshore. The missing data will be published retrospectively by 28th Mar 2019." Given that the 28th Mar 2019 has long passed, I am not…

You might consider inquiring with ENTSO-E regarding the status: transparency@entsoe.eu. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#66

Post by 205guy »

shadowgovt wrote: post #36

While the green angle on this story is definitely good to highlight, I wonder if they're seeing any cost savings too? Solar and wind on the grid increase supply, which should drive down price per KwH (of course, the equation isn't quite that simple, since demand in most of the world near human population centers is also highest during the day).

I don't think the electric grid follows a traditional supply-and-demand curve. Every kilowatt used must be generated at the same time. Generation comes in tiers: cheap baseload (coal or nuclear, each with their issues), expensive peaker plants (nat. gas), and cheap but unpredictably intermittent renewables. Prices are highly regulated and agreed to in long-term contracts that take into account peak usage and minimal generation capacity. If demand increases, it is really expensive to supply until the level is enough to build a new baseload plant, but even those are expensive now.

Big users such as Google with its datacenters will of course negociate their own electricity contracts. I think renewables are the cheapest to buy right now, so by moving load around to be able to maximize use of cheap renewable electricity, they will definitely save money.

Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#67

Post by smadge »

ben509 wrote: post #29

Optimizing for this is a perfect task to throw at a simple market. Especially because actually reworking the software to take advantage of resources at different times is often going to require a decent amount of work by engineers. One way to do it would be assign various jobs a value, (which could be dynamic e.g. it might get more important as information becomes stale) and have them bid on compute power. You could…

Borg has concepts of quota and priority which function as the internal market you are talking about: Verma, et al. "Large-scale cluster management at Google with Borg".

Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#68

Post by ftlio »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #49
ben509 wrote: post #29

Optimizing for this is a perfect task to throw at a simple market. Especially because actually reworking the software to take advantage of resources at different times is often going to require a decent amount of work by engineers. One way to do it would be assign various jobs a value, (which could be dynamic e.g. it might get more important as information becomes stale) and have them bid on compute power. You could…

In the UK households used to be able to get economy 7 electricity, which meant cheap electricity at night (I'd guess for 7 hours?). I've wanted to have realtime pricing like that for a while, it seems to be becoming available again. I honestly thought that was what the advanced electricity meter roll-out was going to do; but it seems not. More direct energy cost to service price charged seems like a good thing in gen…

Smart Meters and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) still have about half of all meters to go in the US. Real time pricing for the customer requires cutting through a few intermediaries designed to keep the grid and utility bills stable, much at the cost of the environment.

Texas energy markets are where all the fun on this front is really happening.

Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#69

Post by lukev »

ben509 wrote: post #29

Optimizing for this is a perfect task to throw at a simple market. Especially because actually reworking the software to take advantage of resources at different times is often going to require a decent amount of work by engineers. One way to do it would be assign various jobs a value, (which could be dynamic e.g. it might get more important as information becomes stale) and have them bid on compute power. You could…

I really hoped this is what EC2 spot instances would be, but it doesn't seem to work that way. My spot instances usually get terminated due to "no available capacity" without any major price movement.

It would also be pretty neat to integrate processing power markets with the wholesale energy markets. Energy prices are quite volatile and making load responsive to that would actually be quite helpful to stabilize them.

Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows

#70

Post by heavenlyblue »

shadowgovt wrote: post #35
bizzleDawg wrote: post #18

It seems that it must be a really difficult problem to work out the optimal solution for having spare capacity to allow time/location shifting of workloads to minimize carbon per unit of compute. This Dell paper[0] suggests that 16% of the carbon over a typical server lifecycle is from the manufacture, so you probably don't want a server sitting there unused for 23 hours per day, since the overall carbon/compute rati…

Carbon consumed in building a server is sunk cost and would be paid independent of whether the server does any kind of carbon-footprint-aware load shifting. Assuming the server is "sitting unused for 23 hours a day" is the wrong model for what this work changed. You're assuming the server could be running at 50% duty cycle vs. 100% duty cyle. It isn't; since we're talking the batch load, there's a roughly fixed amoun…

Doesn’t not buying servers create pressure to not build them in the first place?
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