Water-Powered Computers
You may think that data centers can be located wherever real estate is cheap. Tech Review writes about the value of water to conserve electricity and improve efficiency. Check out the placement of data centers in very particular geographic locations.
In addition to bandwidth, data centers need electricity. Lots of it. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that U.S. servers and data centers were responsible for a total of 1.5 percent of America’s electricity consumption in 2006 (about 61 billion kilowatt-hours), at a cost of $4.5 billion, and that their consumption will double by 2011. Not surprisingly, data-center owners have searched out sources of cheap electricity in the hydroelectric dams that dot the Rockies and the Northwest. Washington and Oregon, America’s top two hydroelectric-producing states, have electricity costs 20 to 30 percent lower than the national average. As a result, small towns in places like the Columbia River basin are enjoying a data-center gold rush, often helped by local authorities who are willing to provide owners with fiber-optic connections to the rest of the world.
