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So how much diesel do you have to store for doing that 10 years? The only problem I see is that if you cut the cable, the data center has no value anymore. And

So how much diesel do you have to store for doing that 10 years? The only problem I see is that if you cut the cable, the data center has no value anymore. And that cable has to be connected somewhere to the normal grid.

wongarsu 7y ago
> So how much diesel do you have to store for doing that 10 years? A lot, but probably less than you think. To provide one kilowatt of power continusly for 10 years you need about 23 million liters of diesel, which fits in a cube with 28 meter long walls. A railway car of diesel can provide ~3W continously for 10 years. A tank the size of the Hindenburg could provide ~8kW for 10 years. The world's largest supertanker could carry enough diesel to provide ~22kW for 10 years.
- jazzyjackson 7y ago
  Out of curiosity I googled "shelf life of diesel fuel" and found many sources suggesting 1 - 2 years is typical before it starts building up gums and settlement from reacting with oxygen -- but steps can be taken to last up to 10 years. Pretty interesting: https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp-country/en_au/media/fuel-news/long-term-storage-diesel.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp-country/en_au/media/fuel-n...
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    Strategic reserves and I assume these bunkers have tanks deep enough that geothermal heating causes convection currents, slowly stirring the contents. That seems to have a positive effect on shelf life as well.
- tachyonbeam 7y ago
  But a datacenter with 200 servers might need on the order of 40KW, so that would be over 13,000 railway cars to last 10 years... Not very realistic. Now if you had a small nuclear reactor, on the other hand ;)