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> uses far more energy than a data center ever will. https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/11/power-shift-data-centers-to-replace-aluminum.ht

by JackFr 8y ago

> uses far more energy than a data center ever will. https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/11/power-shift-data-centers-to-replace-aluminum.html https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/11/p... "Power shift: Data centers to replace aluminum industry as largest energy consumers in Washington state" Large custom data centers draw on the order of 300MW, a non-scientific survey of aluminum smelters on the web has their draw around 400-700MW, so I'd be careful about 'ever will'.

Retric 8y ago
Your first argument is about aggregate demand which is irrelevant. Home lighting uses a lot of power in aggregate but it’s very low per home. Smelting issues a lot of power in a very small space resulting in a lot of heat, where computing it not getting anywhere close to that in terms of density, just in aggregate over giant data centers.
- JackFr 8y ago
  The fact that data centers don’t get hot enough to melt aluminum is by design. But I’m not sure I understand your point. I look Google Maps images of the Wenatchee Alcoa works and the Google Data center in the Dalles and they seem order-of-magnitude the same size to my eyeballs. You seem to think I don’t appreciate how much energy aluminum smelting requires - I do. But imagine the heating element of your aluminum crucible broken into a million pieces, each piece with a cooling system to keep its temperature down. That’s a data center.
  - Retric 8y ago
    The point is aggregate demand is not that difficult to deal with, just look at say New York City. Large data centers are huge building, the density is very much limited by heat issues and while the building might get bigger the power demand per square foot does not. We can move lots of power through very small areas consider individual steam turbines are up at 600 MW. Even if we start talking about GW for a single datacenter, the single Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is already 8GW.

by JackFr 8y ago

Retric 8y ago

Your first argument is about aggregate demand which is irrelevant. Home lighting uses a lot of power in aggregate but it’s very low per home. Smelting issues a lot of power in a very small space resulting in a lot of heat, where computing it not getting anywhere close to that in terms of density, just in aggregate over giant data centers.

JackFr 8y ago
The fact that data centers don’t get hot enough to melt aluminum is by design. But I’m not sure I understand your point. I look Google Maps images of the Wenatchee Alcoa works and the Google Data center in the Dalles and they seem order-of-magnitude the same size to my eyeballs. You seem to think I don’t appreciate how much energy aluminum smelting requires - I do. But imagine the heating element of your aluminum crucible broken into a million pieces, each piece with a cooling system to keep its temperature down. That’s a data center.
- Retric 8y ago
  The point is aggregate demand is not that difficult to deal with, just look at say New York City. Large data centers are huge building, the density is very much limited by heat issues and while the building might get bigger the power demand per square foot does not. We can move lots of power through very small areas consider individual steam turbines are up at 600 MW. Even if we start talking about GW for a single datacenter, the single Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is already 8GW.