5 ms·

Google is officially 100% sun and wind powered – 3.0 gigawatts worth

163 points by rippsu 9y ago

thewhitetulip 9y ago
This is absolutely amazing.
westurner 9y ago
+1000. https://environment.google https://environment.google TIL this is called "Corporate Renewable Energy Procurement". https://www.google.com/search?q=Corporate+Renewable+Energy+Procurement https://www.google.com/search?q=Corporate+Renewable+Energy+P... PPA: Power Purchase Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_purchase_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_purchase_agreement
murph-almighty 9y ago
This is amazing, especially considering their cloud services. Powering an entire datacenter on renewable can NOT be easy. Does Amazon have a similar initiative? Given their market share in the cloud and their widespread AZ's I imagine it'd be tricky. edit: jk, apparently their energy needs are half that of Google and they're making headway. (https://electrek.co/2017/10/19/amazon-wind-farm/ https://electrek.co/2017/10/19/amazon-wind-farm/)
- dastbe 9y ago
  I think your math on that last bit is off. The article states they have 1.2GW, which is somewhere between 40% and 50% of Amazon's power usage (started 2016 at 40%, expect to exit at 50%). That would peg 100% at somewhere between 2.4 and 3.
dvddgld 9y ago
Now that's more than impressive, well done Google
allenz 9y ago
Great work. Specifically, Google purchases 3 GW of renewable energy and sells it to the grid at a loss.[1] This isn't the same as being directly powered by renewables because they don't have to worry about time shifting supply and demand, which is often done using natural gas. [1] cloud.google.com/environment/
- fulafel 9y ago
  Incidentally, this is close to how it works (at least around my part of the world) when you as a residential customer choose to buy solar/wind generated electricity. The retail electricity providers sell you electricity from a spot market (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market#Wholesale_electricity_markets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market#Wholesale_e...) and you pay the local power comapny to send you the electricity over the national grid. BTW there's a big difference here between GW (power) and energy - do they contract 3 GW 24/7 or are they buying 24*3 GWh per day whenever the spot prices are lowest, or are they paying companies to average 3 GW per day over a multi year contract? In the first scenario there will be surplus over 3GW for most of the day.
  - allenz 9y ago
    3 GW measures average power. Google just buys the entire output of wind or solar farms, so supply is not matched with demand.[1] This is a known problem with renewables. Elon Musk claims that he can solve it with a relatively small area of batteries like the Powerpack, but he's sold less than 1 GW so far because batteries are expensive. [1] https://environment.google/projects/announcement-100/ https://environment.google/projects/announcement-100/
    - fulafel 9y ago
      I guess that accounting is natural for marketing numbers. I don't generally think it's a problem, it's just a feature of those generation methods and just means we need overprovisioning. Whereas fossil fuels have unsurmountable problems and cause untold human suffering, famines and damage to the environment.
flukus 9y ago
> Google is officially off-setting 100% of its energy usage with either wind or solar power. A tad misleading, they are still reliant on fossil fuels but are offsetting it elsewhere. That said I think the congratulations are well deserved.
jbb67 9y ago
so?
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  You do not find this amazing?
m0llusk 9y ago
This is great progress, but there are still some significant low hanging fruit to consider. For example, the power it takes to display the all white background of the search and other top Google pages is significant. Changing that to black or partly black or some darker color could save amounts of energy that are hard to calculate and represent draw from all over the network.
- asdgkknio 9y ago
  Not on an LCD. The backlight is always on, even if the screen is black. I wonder how much power the 50 pounds of JS on Youtube costs.
- bhhaskin 9y ago
  The largest power drain in an LCD/LED screen is the backlight and that has to be running regardless of which color is being displayed. This would only benefit OLED screen (which doesn't have a normal backlight) which are pretty much only used on high-end phones and TVs. Unlikely to make a significant impact in energy use, and furthermore any amount of energy savings would likely be lost in the extra amount of black ink needed to print out pages.
cdancette 9y ago
Why do they sell at loss? Is the energy they buy from the grid cheaper than the energy they buy from renewable sources? And do they just make an exchange with the grid for the same amount of energy?
- drwl 9y ago
  My guess is that sometimes it costs money to provide energy. I would imagine it has to do with supply and demand at that time. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601221/texas-and-california-have-too-much-renewable-energy/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601221/texas-and-californ...
stuaxo 9y ago
I guess this is just their servers. How about from server to screen, this has to be a future aim ?
blibble 9y ago
that's almost just under one bitcoin... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumption/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumpti... says miners use 29.05TWh annually, so [29.05TWh / (365 * 24)h] = 3.3GW
- timthelion 9y ago
  I'm confused, you mean that the bitcoin network takes 3.3GW or it takes 3.3GWh to mine one bitcoin? It seems that google takes the same electricity as the entire bitcoin network.
nkkollaw 9y ago
Great Scott!

163 points by rippsu 9y ago

This is absolutely amazing.

+1000. https://environment.google https://environment.google TIL this is called "Corporate Renewable Energy Procurement". https://www.google.com/search?q=Corporate+Renewable+Energy+Procurement https://www.google.com/search?q=Corporate+Renewable+Energy+P... PPA: Power Purchase Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_purchase_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_purchase_agreement

murph-almighty 9y ago

This is amazing, especially considering their cloud services. Powering an entire datacenter on renewable can NOT be easy. Does Amazon have a similar initiative? Given their market share in the cloud and their widespread AZ's I imagine it'd be tricky. edit: jk, apparently their energy needs are half that of Google and they're making headway. (https://electrek.co/2017/10/19/amazon-wind-farm/ https://electrek.co/2017/10/19/amazon-wind-farm/)

dastbe 9y ago
I think your math on that last bit is off. The article states they have 1.2GW, which is somewhere between 40% and 50% of Amazon's power usage (started 2016 at 40%, expect to exit at 50%). That would peg 100% at somewhere between 2.4 and 3.

dvddgld 9y ago

Now that's more than impressive, well done Google

allenz 9y ago

Great work. Specifically, Google purchases 3 GW of renewable energy and sells it to the grid at a loss.[1] This isn't the same as being directly powered by renewables because they don't have to worry about time shifting supply and demand, which is often done using natural gas. [1] cloud.google.com/environment/

fulafel 9y ago
Incidentally, this is close to how it works (at least around my part of the world) when you as a residential customer choose to buy solar/wind generated electricity. The retail electricity providers sell you electricity from a spot market (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market#Wholesale_electricity_markets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market#Wholesale_e...) and you pay the local power comapny to send you the electricity over the national grid. BTW there's a big difference here between GW (power) and energy - do they contract 3 GW 24/7 or are they buying 24*3 GWh per day whenever the spot prices are lowest, or are they paying companies to average 3 GW per day over a multi year contract? In the first scenario there will be surplus over 3GW for most of the day.
- allenz 9y ago
  3 GW measures average power. Google just buys the entire output of wind or solar farms, so supply is not matched with demand.[1] This is a known problem with renewables. Elon Musk claims that he can solve it with a relatively small area of batteries like the Powerpack, but he's sold less than 1 GW so far because batteries are expensive. [1] https://environment.google/projects/announcement-100/ https://environment.google/projects/announcement-100/
  - fulafel 9y ago
    I guess that accounting is natural for marketing numbers. I don't generally think it's a problem, it's just a feature of those generation methods and just means we need overprovisioning. Whereas fossil fuels have unsurmountable problems and cause untold human suffering, famines and damage to the environment.

flukus 9y ago

> Google is officially off-setting 100% of its energy usage with either wind or solar power. A tad misleading, they are still reliant on fossil fuels but are offsetting it elsewhere. That said I think the congratulations are well deserved.

jbb67 9y ago

so?

jacksmith21006 9y ago
You do not find this amazing?

m0llusk 9y ago

This is great progress, but there are still some significant low hanging fruit to consider. For example, the power it takes to display the all white background of the search and other top Google pages is significant. Changing that to black or partly black or some darker color could save amounts of energy that are hard to calculate and represent draw from all over the network.

asdgkknio 9y ago
Not on an LCD. The backlight is always on, even if the screen is black. I wonder how much power the 50 pounds of JS on Youtube costs.
bhhaskin 9y ago
The largest power drain in an LCD/LED screen is the backlight and that has to be running regardless of which color is being displayed. This would only benefit OLED screen (which doesn't have a normal backlight) which are pretty much only used on high-end phones and TVs. Unlikely to make a significant impact in energy use, and furthermore any amount of energy savings would likely be lost in the extra amount of black ink needed to print out pages.

cdancette 9y ago

Why do they sell at loss? Is the energy they buy from the grid cheaper than the energy they buy from renewable sources? And do they just make an exchange with the grid for the same amount of energy?

drwl 9y ago
My guess is that sometimes it costs money to provide energy. I would imagine it has to do with supply and demand at that time. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601221/texas-and-california-have-too-much-renewable-energy/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601221/texas-and-californ...

stuaxo 9y ago

I guess this is just their servers. How about from server to screen, this has to be a future aim ?

blibble 9y ago

that's almost just under one bitcoin... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumption/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumpti... says miners use 29.05TWh annually, so [29.05TWh / (365 * 24)h] = 3.3GW

timthelion 9y ago
I'm confused, you mean that the bitcoin network takes 3.3GW or it takes 3.3GWh to mine one bitcoin? It seems that google takes the same electricity as the entire bitcoin network.

nkkollaw 9y ago

Great Scott!