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

81–90 of 273 posts

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

#81

Post by kevinchen »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

This is pretty awesome, Google is definitely leading the industry here. One of the more interesting things I learned while working for Google was the intricate way in which the "grid" is managed by a separate but co-operating set of entities. Google disrupted that happy bunch by creating a wholly owned subsidiary that was a licensed power company[1]. That gave it standing to buy from and sell energy to the grid and i…

> Google is definitely leading the industry here.

It's fantastic that Google plans to switch to renewables since they are one of the biggest players. Definitely an exaggeration to say that they are leading the charge. Apple was among the first to make renewables an issue and achieved 100% in data centers back in 2013, with little fanfare.

http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/design-buil...

And creating a subsidiary that's a power company is table stakes:

https://9to5mac.com/2016/06/09/apple-energy-company/

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

#82

Post by mikeyouse »

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).

Wind farms are almost always constructed with Power Purchase Agreements where utilities agree to buy 100% of the output from the installation at a specific price. These prices in Texas / Oklahoma / Iowa are usually under $0.03/kWh.

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

#83

Post by papercrane »

edblarney wrote: post #73
coldpie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can predict the supply of wind, as an average over a long enough period of time, much more easily than you can predict the supply of oil.

"You can predict the supply of wind, as an average over a long enough period of time, much more easily than you can predict the supply of oil." Over the long haul, yes, but in real-time - no. And electricity prices to fluctuate a lot over days, weeks etc.. But indicating that 'price stability' is a point for green is not really fair, when it's almost always going to be considerably more expensive. Knowing that someth…

> Over the long haul, yes, but in real-time - no. And electricity prices to fluctuate a lot over days, weeks etc..

You'd deal with this the same way you deal with it in every other commodity market, futures contracts.

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

#84

Post by mtgx »

peterjs wrote: post #71
ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

This is pretty awesome, Google is definitely leading the industry here. One of the more interesting things I learned while working for Google was the intricate way in which the "grid" is managed by a separate but co-operating set of entities. Google disrupted that happy bunch by creating a wholly owned subsidiary that was a licensed power company[1]. That gave it standing to buy from and sell energy to the grid and i…

Is it? Intel has been purchasing large quantities of green energy for years. In the last few year it has been 100% of the their overall consumption [1]. Is there any difference in what the two companies are trying to achieve? [1] https://www.epa.gov/greenpower/green-power-partnership-natio...

Biomass is considered "green energy"? Why?!

Also that chart is US-only, while the story about Google here is that Google will go 100% renewable energy globally.

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

#86

Post by jayd16 »

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…

The context, I believe, is that the energy deal is a fixed, predictable cost. Shareholders like predictability.

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

#87

Post by firmbeliever »

wilonth wrote: post #72
firmbeliever wrote: post #57

So if they are still getting their power from the grid, who uses the renewable energy that they purchase?

The grid itself. So in the end it pretty much means that they're actually running on renewables. If everyone does what Google does, the utilities could just stop producing fossil fuel electricity entirely and the world would actually consume zero electricity from fossil fuel. You don't have to be a monk to master mindfulness and meditation.

Thanks. Does this mean that Google is essentially subsidizing the cost of producing renewable energy, and if so, does that then mean that the consumers of the renewable energy end up paying less because of said subsidy? I'm just trying to follow where that money is actually going and how it's actually shifting overall usage from fossil fuels to renewable.

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

#88

Post by kevinchen »

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…

Who will use Google's products and services when highly populated coastal areas are underwater?

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

#89

Post by Someone »

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…

Apple (smaller server park, but does that matter?) claims 93% over 2015, so they can't be far behind. http://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_...:

"For starters, as of January 2016, we’re sourcing or generating enough renewable energy to cover 93 percent of the electricity we use at our facilities worldwide. In fact, Apple is now 100 percent renewable in 23 countries, including China, Germany, Singapore, and the United States. We’re also 100 percent renewable at every one of our data centers. So whenever you send an iMessage, download a song from iTunes, or ask Siri a question, the energy Apple uses doesn’t contribute to climate change.

In the past five years, we have reduced the carbon footprint of Apple facilities by 64 percent thanks to our clean energy use, avoiding over 1 million metric tons of carbon emissions. We’re working hard to reach 100 percent renewable energy for all of our facilities worldwide, and help our suppliers in China and everywhere around the world make the same transition to clean energy as we have."

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

#90

Post by baq »

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…

> Let's be honest...it is not good for their shareholders.

perhaps it's not good for short term profit and volume, but don't equate that with shareholders please.

Post reply on HN