Apple Invests in World's Largest Onshore Wind Turbines That Will Power a Danish Data Center (cnbc.com) 31
Apple is investing in the construction of two of the world's largest onshore wind turbines, advancing its efforts to become entirely carbon neutral by 2030. From a report: The power produced by the turbines, located in Denmark, will support Apple's data center in Viborg, the company said in a blog post Thursday. the Viborg center backs Apple's key products, including the App Store, Apple Music, iMessage and Siri. Apple said in July that it extended its goal to become entirely carbon neutral by 2030 to its manufacturing and supply chain. Apple on Thursday said that Varta, a German-based supplier, committed to running its Apple production with 100% renewable power. So far, 72 manufacturing partners have committed to completely renewable energy for Apple production, it added.
Coal is renewable (Score:1)
Nuclear power is a cleaner way just need to put th (Score:2)
Nuclear power is a cleaner way just need to put the waste some where.
Re:Coal is renewable (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the coal found today was created before microbes could break down wood. Coal is not renewable at any significant scale unless you find a way to kill all the wood-eating microbes.
Data centers should be self-powering (Score:2)
No, really, hear me out. If the shell of your data center is harvesting energy from the heat your data center is producing, and you add to that ambient energy sources of wind, hydro, and solar as is available at whatever site you are at, there is no reason why you can't store a ton of servers underneath all that energy harvesting.
Re: (Score:3)
It's more efficient to use heat directly than to try to turn it back into electricity, especially where the temperature isn't high enough to create steam.
In other words pumping the waste heat to nearby homes and buildings may be a better idea.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a very good idea as well. In fact, to be the most efficient (since heat rises) build the homes and buildings on top of an underground data center.
Re: (Score:2)
I expect you'll be wanting to publish your calculations here showing how well this will work. So we'll be wanting to know how many solar panels (don't forget to include formulas for amount of expected sunlight and its angle, at various locations), number of windmills (don't forget estimates of wind at various locations), and number of dams (again, some estimates please). And no funny making up numbers, we'll be wanting cited reputable sources for your numbers.
After you do that, you'll also be providing us w
Re: (Score:2)
Every location is going to be different, thus the term "ambient energy".
As for local zoning costs, just pick towns that have a recent history of declining population. The locality will be so enthused by you siting your data center/neighborhood there (taking a hint off the other responder about harvesting heat to use directly instead of converting it back to electricity with thermocouples) that they'll be willing to sign off on any zoning or tax deal necessary to keep your business.
Re: (Score:2)
The waste heat from the data center is low-grade heat and has few practical uses. Electricity generation is not one of them. In winter it may be used to heat incoming air, or for some type of district heating. These are usually implemented when practical.
Re: (Score:2)
I do not understand what you mean by low grade.
All you need to generate electricity with a thermocouple [wikipedia.org] is a temperature differential at a boundary. Say, between the air you are sucking out of the data center and the air outside.
Can you explain the "low grade heat" concept?
So what do they do when the wind is not blowing? (Score:1)
Do they just shut down the datacenter if there is not sufficient or too much wind for the blades to operate? I'd love to see an uptime chart of that.
Or will it not ACTUALLY be powered by wind, but they'll buy off some wind to get some tax credit, but it will just be powered by conventional energy and they'll feel good about pumping some energy back once in a while. Even if you use the grid as a battery, it will take approx. 200+ wind turbines to completely offset the use of a large datacenter.
Re:So what do they do when the wind is not blowing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The largest onshore wind turbines are 4.8MW nameplate, capacity factor is creeping up in the US as these larger turbines come online. I figure those big boys are probably at ~40%, so 3.84MW average output between them, that's about average for a data center (most of the ones I toured when looking for colo space had 6x 1MW generators in an N+2 or N+1 configuration). Now I have no idea if Apple's sites are closer to a typical colo site or closer to Google scale 100MW monsters, but it's plausible that the aver
Re: (Score:1)
I thought the largest turbines were closer to 10 MW and lo and behold the Vestas V164-10.0 MW with a nameplate capacity of 10 MW. But won't be available until 2021. For now we'll have to settle for the 9.5 MW version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Specifications
Since 2014 this offshore turbine has had the largest power generation capacity, with diameter of rotor 164 metres (538 ft) and swept area 21,124 square metres (227,380 sq ft). Each blade weighs 33-35 tonnes.
Originally called the Vestas V164-7.0MW, at 7.0 MW, the output was increased to 8.0 MW, later to 9.0 MW. In 2017 the turbine capacity was upgraded to 9.5 MW. The next largest wind turbines and competitors to the V164 are the Siemens Wind Power SWT-8.0-154 and Adwen AD 8-180 offshore turbines with a rated capacity of 8 MW. The Enercon E-126 turbine is rated up to 7.58 MW, but only installed onshore.
Starting November 2013, a prototype was installed at Østerild test station. The bottom tower sections weighs over 200 tonnes and is 24 meters long and 7 meters in diameter. The nacelle weighs 390 tonnes. The turbine weighs 1,300 tonnes and the foundation weighs 4,000 tonnes. The total height is 220 m (720 ft). It became operational in January 2014. Later that year favourable winds allowed it to sustain its rated 8 MW power for 24 hours for a record one-day production of 192 MWh. In 2017 the 9 MW version did the same for a new one-day production record of 216 MWh.
At the September 2018 Global Wind Summit, MHI Vestas announced the V164-10.0 MW, the world's first double digit offshore wind turbine. The increase in performance was achieved through "a small design change to enhance airflow and increase cooling in the converter". It is not expected to be available for commercial installation until 2021.
Re: (Score:1)
Nameplate capacity, sure, but the actual consumption direct from the wind (non-excess capacity) + all the downtime when the wind is too soft or too hard or where the wind isn't at the speed to fully engage the turbines and the effective consumption comes to about 10-20% efficiency.
The calculation should also be based, if you're actually going to claim you're consuming wind and not some accounting trickery where your balance sheet is nearing 0, on 0 being what you effectively paid for your energy. If you had
Re: (Score:1)
Please provide a reference for your value.
You are probably talking about the capacity factor [1], which for wind can be e.g. [2].
The Danish offshore wind farm Horns Rev 2 has a nameplate capacity of 209.3 MW. As of January 2017 it has produced 6416 GWh since its commissioning 7 years ago, i.e. an average annual production of 875 GWh/year and a capacity factor of ... 47.7%
Please note that this 48% value includes too little wind, too much wind, downtime due to service etc. I think it also includes losses in the export cable, i.e. to the part of the wind farm that's on land.
The capacity factor for wind farms in the United States is typically a bit lower, e.g. 37.4% for 2018 for Wind.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wi [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:1)
No, I'm talking about actual used energy when taking all factors into consideration.
Apple here is saying that they will rely exclusively on wind. As you say, there is a capacity factor, then there is also the factor of what to do when you don't need the energy, or you need the energy but you don't have sufficient win.
So on the balance books, it looks like this: Day 1: used 45 kWh, generated 50kWh, exported 5kWh; Day 2 used 45kWh, generated 5kWh, imported 45kWh. - over time you get to a balance of 0 kWh used
Re: (Score:1)
This discussion is moot, as Apple has actually only said they'll be using 100% renewable energy for their data center. So when there's not enough wind, they can simply buy power from hydro or solar.
However, as a theoretical exercise:
If you only want to use energy from a wind farm, you somehow have to store it for later when there's no wind. One way is to use hydro-electric power storage, i.e. you store excess wind power as potential energy in a dam. Then, when there's not enough wind power, you use the ener
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, so there's a 7.58MW onshore turbine, that makes it even less of a problem so power a moderate datacenter with the output from a few of them =)
Matters fuck all (Score:1)
The amount of wind power is determined by the subsidy level ("subsidy free" is not subsidy free, does not take into account backup generation capacity and transmission costs). Whether Apple builds and uses some of it is entirely irrelevant, if not them, someone else.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, dear. Are you oil and coal stocks losing value, to post this FUD?
And what if we cut all fossil fuel subsidies?
District heating (Score:2)
They wanted to use the heat from the data center and move it into the nearby district heating network. But because of some Danish tax laws it would have been too expensive to sell the heat.
Something to do with the heat was generated from production/electricity or that they would use heat pumps to bring up the temperature.
So I don’t know if they cancelled that idea.
My God (Score:2)
neutral says who? (Score:2)
Does that include all the ancillary costs, and a realistic assessment of operational lifetime? Need for peaker plants when wind is not blowing? Subsidies? Need for on-site backup power and its ancillary costs?
Paint them black to save birds (Score:2)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
Paint 'em! Save 70+% of birds, OK?
Cancer effects? (Score:2)
Has anyone studied how much cancer the noise from wind turbines will give the fish?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/03... [cnn.com]
Where will they have the turbines (Score:1)
Re: Where will they have the turbines (Score:2)
> already full of wind turbines.
Is there like a (don't laugh) "shadow" downwind of a turbine such that additional turbines behind them are less efficient? Just curious.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a turbulent wake behind the turbine that you don't want to put another one in. It can cause noise and increased wear on the machine. But it doesn't go on forever, and the GP's claim of the place being "full" of wind turbines is exaggerated. Denmark is planning to continue building up capacity.