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A comment on Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows. Parent comment

Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by Klathmon on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @12:10PM (#22947097)
It's probably not at the same level of granularity that Google is trying to accomplish here, but I believe that power-hungry commercial systems have tried to move to when power is cheapest for many years now.

Aluminum Foundries in particular are extremely power intensive and have been run during off-peak times (or are built in areas with cheap plentiful electricity like nearby hydro-electric dams).

Still, i'd love to see this concept made a lot easier for the average consumer. Many people already have smart thermostats, why can't that talk to my power generation company and allow me to over heat/cool when the impact is lowest? Why can't my dish washer run automatically when it would impact the world the least? Why can't my EV automatically charge when power is most available?

I know most of those things are possible, but they sure as hell aren't easy, and IMO they won't truly have an impact until they're on by default and don't require the user to do much of anything.

These things seem like they are easily doable, but we just need the different industries to work together to come up with ways to have all of this stuff interoperate.

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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by floatrock on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @01:17PM (#22947886)
> Aluminum Foundries in particular are extremely power intensive and have been run during off-peak times (or are built in areas with cheap plentiful electricity like nearby hydro-electric dams).

Fun fact: this is a big reason why aerospace congregated in the pacific northwest during WWII (eg Boeing in Seattle).

Aluminum is key to aircraft because it's lightweight, and at the turn of the century the US went on a dam-building spree with a lot of hydro (ie large consistent baseload) being located in the pacific northwest.

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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by skummetmaelk on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @02:00PM (#22948357)
Another fun fact: in 2018 the US produced 890,000 tons of Aluminium. Iceland (population ~350,000) produced 870,000 tons.
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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by saagarjha on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @03:57PM (#22949546)
Is it Iceland’s insatiable desire to produce aluminum, or an abundance of geothermal energy?
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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by eisa01 on Thursday April 23, 2020 @07:19AM (#22954763)
It's hydropower ;)

Geothermal energy is mostly for district heating and hot water

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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by hnburnsy on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @12:37PM (#22947408)
Some power companies are integrating with your smart thermostat and may pre-cool in some case. Example, APS in Arizona... --- During an event, how will my thermostat be adjusted?  At the start of an event, your thermostat temperature will be automatically adjusted up a few degrees above the current temperature.  Each event will typically last an average of 2 hours, and will typically occur between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Events typically will not occur on holidays.  In some cases, your thermostat temperature may be adjusted down a few degrees prior to the event to pre-cool the home and ensure your comfort during an event.  Once the event is over, your thermostat will return to its normal set point and/or schedule.
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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by ocdtrekkie on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @01:04PM (#22947731)
ComEd in Chicago can do this with Nest thermostats as well. At the time I had a Nest thermostat, they actually paid people to enable this. And I basically made back most of the cost of my Nest that way. (Before selling it off for a less cloud-connected thermostat.)
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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by ARandomerDude on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @01:03PM (#22947714)
My electricity provider does the same. It's opt-in and you get a $200 credit at the end of the summer if you stay in the program. Pretty good deal, I think.
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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by plorg on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @12:37PM (#22947421)
I believe some aluminum smelters can even bid into electrical markets, either directly as dispatchable load(/negative generation) or as ancillary services for grid stabilization.
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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by beckingz on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @01:43PM (#22948159)
That's awesome. Do you have a source for that?
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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by mschuster91 on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @02:02PM (#22948384)
At least in Germany some huge consumers (cement mills, huge refrigerated warehouses) are classified as "Lastabwurfkunden" ("load shedding customers"), where the grid operation center can remotely shut them down. Information is scarce as Google has a lot of copies of the Wikipedia article trashing the results, but at least I found an insurance company that asks if the applicant is classified as such (http://www.energyprotect.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Risik...).
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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by nomadluap on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @12:40PM (#22947451)
There are already some solutions around that try to address this on a consumer level. I recently watched a teardown for a piece of test gear that utilizes frequencies injected directly to the mains supply in order to control home hot-water heaters in Australia[0].

That's the great thing about standards -- there are so many to choose from!

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po4b7JhpxKQ

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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by awild on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @03:07PM (#22949043)
I imagine this could result in a feedback loop between the power plants scheduling and your devices scheduling if enough people use it.
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Re:Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and ... by generatorguy on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @04:07PM (#22949634)
Wind, solar, and run of river hydro are unscheduled so if load ramps up due to renewable generation ramping up there is no change in load to be accommodated by dispatchable scheduled units.

If the load responding to increased renewable generation exceeded the generation then the excess load should have just run whenever it was convenient since it isn’t using renewable power anyway.

I’ve omitted nuclear and large hydro from my discussion even though their fuel doesn’t emit carbon.

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