News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Image GPT. Parent comment

Re:Image GPT by boulos on Wednesday June 17, 2020 @10:52PM (#23559330)
Just a correction here: we build datacenters near large sources of renewable / hydro plants (I consider hydro a borderline case). We buy renewable credits for everything and are even trying to timeshift load now to match renewable generation peaks.

tl;dr: not coal plants :).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Image GPT by tinco on Thursday June 18, 2020 @02:33AM (#23560376)
Is it just a coincidence that the Eemshaven (eu-west4) datacenter is close to a coal plant then?

I'm pretty sure we're going to close that plant soon though.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Image GPT by nl on Thursday June 18, 2020 @03:25AM (#23560644)
> Is it just a coincidence that the Eemshaven (eu-west4) datacenter is close to a coal plant then?

Presumably, since:

"Our data center in Eemshaven was the first to be powered by 100% renewable energy from day one."

https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/eemshaven...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Image GPT by tinco on Thursday June 18, 2020 @06:13PM (#23568722)
I appreciate them buying credits, but as nice as those windmills and solar panels are, when the sun doesn't shine, and the wind doesn't blow, what gets burned is coal. Anyway I suppose that's more a policy issue of The Netherlands, I think it's quite shameful we still have coal plants. Those credits hide the real cost of renewable energy.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Image GPT by nl on Friday June 19, 2020 @09:05AM (#23574095)
I'm not sure - they say the data center is "the first Google datacenter to be powered by 100% renewable energy from day one."

https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/dutch...

And they seem pretty serious about removing non-renewables altogether.

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-sustainability.appspot.c...

[ Parent | on HN ]