Apple Athenry data centre

threeball

irishfire wrote: »

DC's that include their own renewable generation and can access a supply of grid renewables does not. This is all based on the overall offset, yes they may need baseline fossil at certain times, but that will be offset by what they generate, the same as any other large industrial facility that does on site generation, be that wind, solar or CHP.

Firstly CHP is not renewable, you're burning gas so thats a fossil fuel and a pretty inefficient use of the fuel at that. Secondly this idea the DC's generate their own renewables is absolute bunkum. They buy up the rights to power from a windfarm in Donegal and use the production from this to offset against their usage. The power in donegal is fed on to the same grid as everyone else and gets mixed in with power from a whole manner of sources. The energy from this would have gone on the grid anyway to displace fossil fuels. Its a kin to me claiming that my power comes from ardnacrusha and that I'm running on 100% renewables. Hogwash in other words.

Portsalon

cnocbui wrote: »

How near? I presume we the tax payers would be required to foot the bill for a sub station and lines needed to make a connection.

What complete absence of knowledge or other intellectual deficit would lead you to make such an absurd assumption?



Mod note - User banned for uncivilness

irishfire

threeball wrote:

Firstly CHP is not renewable, you're burning gas so thats a fossil fuel and a pretty inefficient use of the fuel at that. Secondly this idea the DC's generate their own renewables is absolute bunkum. They buy up the rights to power from a windfarm in Donegal and use the production from this to offset against their usage. The power in donegal is fed on to the same grid as everyone else and gets mixed in with power from a whole manner of sources. The energy from this would have gone on the grid anyway to displace fossil fuels. Its a kin to me claiming that my power comes from ardnacrusha and that I'm running on 100% renewables. Hogwash in other words.

CHP related to on site generation as it the most prevalent at the moment in Ireland, not a renewable source. And what's wrong with a DC generating on site? If they have access to a resource to generate renewably then what's to stop them? If they want to construct that generation asset in a more suitable place and offset against it, more power to them (literally and figuratively). If they want to buy rights to a renewable asset off their own site, same story.

If you're a customer of SSE Airtricity then that's the hogwash you're peddling because they claim to be a 100% green provider by virtue of their wind generation assets, but as you correctly state, customers in the certain parts of the country will seldom use a single joule of wind energy due to how electricity flows and is consumed throughout the grid.

Now it's equally valid that electricity is generated and consumed in the exact same moment, so yes, if a DC possesses enough renewable generation on the Irish grid that their usage never exceeds what they are generating, they can (quite correctly) claim to be renewably powered and help our targets by selling the surplus.

Gadgetman496

I'm delighted Apple are going ahead with the DC in Athenry.

Doctors room ghost

Gadgetman496 wrote: »

I'm delighted Apple are going ahead with the DC in Athenry.

The sites for sale.
While the paddywhackers were stabbing each other in the back and delaying proceedings, apple got a pain in the boll1x and moved on.
Good old paddy Irishman.
The site will remain the same it ever was.a done nothing swamp.no progress for paddy.

threeball

irishfire wrote: »

CHP related to on site generation as it the most prevalent at the moment in Ireland, not a renewable source. And what's wrong with a DC generating on site? If they have access to a resource to generate renewably then what's to stop them? If they want to construct that generation asset in a more suitable place and offset against it, more power to them (literally and figuratively). If they want to buy rights to a renewable asset off their own site, same story.

If you're a customer of SSE Airtricity then that's the hogwash you're peddling because they claim to be a 100% green provider by virtue of their wind generation assets, but as you correctly state, customers in the certain parts of the country will seldom use a single joule of wind energy due to how electricity flows and is consumed throughout the grid.

Now it's equally valid that electricity is generated and consumed in the exact same moment, so yes, if a DC possesses enough renewable generation on the Irish grid that their usage never exceeds what they are generating, they can (quite correctly) claim to be renewably powered and help our targets by selling the surplus.

They can generate CHP on site but they are burning gas to do so. The volume of gas is recorded and goes against our carbon emissions. Gas has probably the worst profile for NOX emissions. Believing this has anything to do with being "renewable" or offsetting emissions is pure fantasy. As is believing that surplus power from windfarms on the other side of the country somehow offsets all the additional power a DC uses in the first place. No windfarm is coming even close to producing what a DC of this size requires.

threeball

Doctors room ghost wrote: »

The sites for sale.
While the paddywhackers were stabbing each other in the back and delaying proceedings, apple got a pain in the boll1x and moved on.
Good old paddy Irishman.
The site will remain the same it ever was.a done nothing swamp.no progress for paddy.

If you think DC's sited like this are progress then you need to educate yourself.

Balf

1641 wrote: »

Today's Sunday Times reports that Apple's site in Tuam has been advertised for sale in the US as a "ready to go data centre site".

Edit: Athenry

Google "ready to go data centre site" Athenry

1 Result, from 2017.

Does this actually exist, as the Internet doesn't seem to be aware of it?

irishfire

threeball wrote:

They can generate CHP on site but they are burning gas to do so. The volume of gas is recorded and goes against our carbon emissions. Gas has probably the worst profile for NOX emissions. Believing this has anything to do with being "renewable" or offsetting emissions is pure fantasy. As is believing that surplus power from windfarms on the other side of the country somehow offsets all the additional power a DC uses in the first place. No windfarm is coming even close to producing what a DC of this size requires.

Okey, you have some issue with me mentioning CHP so I'll clear it up for you. I made the point that CHP is the most prevalent on-site generated used in Ireland and therefore the greatest source of offset from grid usage in industry at the moment. I was not suggesting it was renewable in any way shape or form, but it is looking promising as a system that can later be ported to biogas, which is.

If you want to check, I'm willing to bet that half our power today is being generated from gas, so we rely heavily on it, both for grid and on site generation. It's going nowhere for the near future.

Going back to renewables and DCs in Ireland, 240MW is the figure that was shouted for the Athenry data centre at full capacity, I think 30MW when opened first. Ireland had 2,900MW installed in 2017. Using a capacity factor of 35% from 2015, we get about 1000MW. Yes it's not ideal, but we knew what we were getting into with wind. It's the reason we need to start doing tidal sooner rather than later in Ireland. We need to store or get more reliable, constant renewables. And windfarms can supply clean electricity to any part of the country as demand changes, no fantasy, just some very simple laws of engineering and physics. It's the reason we have a grid, and the reason we build windfarms where there is wind to extract the most from the investment, and use said grid to get it to where it's consumed.

It appears however, that certain sections of our society don't want us to have wind turbines, or don't want us to expand our electrical grid (or want us to expand using more environmentally damaging methods), but also want us to decarbonise and move away from fossil fuels, stop foreign investment unless they build playgrounds and pay our fines that we incurred ourselves, etc etc. It can't suit us every way, and you're not making any substantially valid argument for why Apple (or the new landowners) shouldn't be building there.

irishfire

threeball wrote:

If you think DC's sited like this are progress then you need to educate yourself.

What is progress in your opinion then?

lleti

I do lol at all the local businesses that thought they were about to hit the bigtime.

There was never going to be loads of jobs long term anyways.

cnocbui

salmocab wrote: »

Are you sure that it’s 8% of our total consumption? That seems extraordinarily high, given how many DCs we already have.

That is what has been reported:

As part of a hearing concerning its proposed 850 million euro ($960 million) data center in Athenry, Ireland, Apple has acknowledged that it has no current plans to build power generators on the site, and would therefore be plugging into the Irish national grid.

The result? That according to a residents group, Apple will wind up as the largest private user of electricity in the state, consuming 8 percent of the national capacity — or more than the entire daily power usage of Dublin, which is home to over half a million people.

https://www.cultofmac.com/430229/apples-ireland-data-center-could-use-more-energy-than-city-of-dublin/

Balf

Balf wrote: »

Google "ready to go data centre site" Athenry

1 Result, from 2017.

Does this actually exist, as the Internet doesn't seem to be aware of it?

And here it is.

https://www.binswanger.com/who-we-are/featured-properties/?propertyId=Ireland

1641

Balf wrote: »

Google "ready to go data centre site" Athenry

1 Result, from 2017.

Does this actually exist, as the Internet doesn't seem to be aware of it?

From the front page of the Business Section of yesterday's Sunday Times (printed edition):


The site is being advertised for sale by property agents in the US and Ireland as Data Centre Hub West, a "ready-to-go data centre development site". Neither the American agent, Binswanger Global, nor the Irish agent Maguire Chartered Surveyors in Dublin responded to requests for comment on the sale".

See also :https://galwaybayfm.ie/galway-bay-fm-news-desk/apple-puts-athenry-data-centre-site-on-market/

salmocab

cnocbui wrote: »

That is what has been reported:

https://www.cultofmac.com/430229/apples-ireland-data-center-could-use-more-energy-than-city-of-dublin/

I’d be very suspicious of the residents group maths there. I’d go as far as to call it nonsense. That would mean one DC using 7% of the countries electricity. There are several massive DCs in Dublin they couldn’t all be using these sort of numbers.

cnocbui

salmocab wrote: »

I’d be very suspicious of the residents group maths there. I’d go as far as to call it nonsense. That would mean one DC using 7% of the countries electricity. There are several massive DCs in Dublin they couldn’t all be using these sort of numbers.

I believe the resident in question who did the calculations was Allan Daly, an engineer who lives in Athenry. No doubt you think engineers are incapable of performing accurate mathematical calculations, but I would disagree, based on experience.



According to the last census, there are 1,725,929 houses in Ireland, so 230,000 houses would be an additional 13.3% of the household energy consumption. 8% doesn't seem implausible. Even if it were 5%, it's still a lot and the EU fines would be massive.

threeball

irishfire wrote: »

What is progress in your opinion then?

Progress is seeing a project like this in an appropriate site that sees the millions of kws of what would be waste energy going in to heating homes, businesses, schools, hotels. The owner of the DC could charge a cost per kw but at least they would be seriously reducing the impact of such a facility on the environment, offset the carbon taxes and fines that the taxpayers of this country will have to carry for no benefit to themselves. Ran like that it could be carbon neutral. If they then decided they wanted to invest in the building of a windfarm or cover their roof in solar PV then they could claim to be actually a positive. Anything short of that is not progress, its sending us backwards at an unsustainable pace.

salmocab

cnocbui wrote: »

I believe the resident in question who did the calculations was Allan Daly, an engineer who lives in Athenry. No doubt you think engineers are incapable of performing accurate mathematical calculations, but I would disagree, based on experience.



According to the last census, there are 1,725,929 houses in Ireland, so 230,000 houses would be an additional 13.3% of the household energy consumption. 8% doesn't seem implausible. Even if it were 5%, it's still a lot and the EU fines would be massive.

But that graphic is just some figures with nothing to back them up based on a smaller facility in Dublin. Facebook is massive and has a 100 MW capacity but uses substantially less than that. I’m sure engineers are capable of accurate calculations but I’m also sure that they are capable of doing things to suit agendas.

cnocbui

salmocab wrote: »

But that graphic is just some figures with nothing to back them up based on a smaller facility in Dublin. Facebook is massive and has a 100 MW capacity but uses substantially less than that. I’m sure engineers are capable of accurate calculations but I’m also sure that they are capable of doing things to suit agendas.

Give it up! Jesus!

Gary Keogh, sales director for the Irish arm of global data centre builder Digital Realty, is well placed to answer.

Mr Keogh said Digital Realty's data centre at the Digital Profile Park in Dublin will require 16 megawatts of energy once it reaches 80,000 square feet in size.

On the same basis, Apple's site, which will cover around 1.79m square feet, will require 358 megawatts of energy.

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/apples-new-irish-data-centre-everything-you-need-to-know-31015930.html

lleti

When people heard of Apple + Athenry they thought they'd be getting loads of jobs, a multinational in Athenry, well paid jobs for all.

The reality of data centers is a bunch of computers generating heat and a small number of jobs.

salmocab

cnocbui wrote: »

Give it up! Jesus!

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/apples-new-irish-data-centre-everything-you-need-to-know-31015930.html

There’s no need for the tetchyness. Those companies will use different cooling systems and have very different business models. DRT rent space to customers with maximum allowances per square foot. Using square footage would be a wildly inaccurate way to make that calculation. Apple would control exactly what racks go in and have a vested interest in keeping the costs down as well as having control over the rack distribution and keeping the PUE as low as possible which DRT wouldn’t. For what it’s worth I’m not arguing that it should have got the go ahead as I don’t know the area so don’t know whether it should have happened but I don’t buy these numbers at all. Also if they were just using a blunt multiplication of square footage of DRTs they would have arrived at hundreds of full time jobs after construction.

irishfire

I had thought I hit post on a response about district heating and the cost it would place on the taxpayer to retrofit or to build a town that included it, as they are doing with Amazon in Tallaght, but it looks like I lost it. I don't think any amount of reason will get through to certain people on here.

cnocbui wrote:

Give it up! Jesus!

That's the advise I'd be giving you at this point. Any valid points that are raised are not suitable for your argument so invalid in your view.

The fact is that some other company will likely buy and build on that site, Ireland's climate is one of the most economical to run a DC in and even more so along a line from Dublin to Westport given the mean temperatures.

Whether that's Apple or not, it will happen.

threeball

irishfire wrote: »

I had thought I hit post on a response about district heating and the cost it would place on the taxpayer to retrofit or to build a town that included it, as they are doing with Amazon in Tallaght, but it looks like I lost it. I don't think any amount of reason will get through to certain people on here.



That's the advise I'd be giving you at this point. Any valid points that are raised are not suitable for your argument so invalid in your view.

The fact is that some other company will likely buy and build on that site, Ireland's climate is one of the most economical to run a DC in and even more so along a line from Dublin to Westport given the mean temperatures.

Whether that's Apple or not, it will happen.

Just because it will doesn't mean it should. You were talking rubbish earlier on about CHP. What the hell would a data centre want with a CHP, 60% heat energy, 30% electricity and the rest wasted so 30% efficient in terms of what the data centre wants in the first place which is electricity. I know you don't give a damn about carbon emissions or penalties as long as "progress" is made but at least have some clue about the technologies you're claiming will somehow bypass these problems. And just because you generate on site doesn't mean it won't be penalised.

biko

cnocbui wrote: »

I believe the resident in question who did the calculations was Allan Daly, an engineer who lives in Athenry. No doubt you think engineers are incapable of performing accurate mathematical calculations, but I would disagree, based on experience.



According to the last census, there are 1,725,929 houses in Ireland, so 230,000 houses would be an additional 13.3% of the household energy consumption. 8% doesn't seem implausible. Even if it were 5%, it's still a lot and the EU fines would be massive.

There are a few issues with that image

Apple will not pay for 230.000 houses to be heated so there is little use to compare like that.
It's not like we can power all those homes if Apple doesn't build the datacentre

Is Athenry going to be a 360MW centre? Today the biggest ones use 150 MW

If all of Ireland's wind farms produce close to 3000MW, that means this one centre will use up 15% or so of all the energy, essentially depriving existing homes and factories of energy.

cnocbui

biko wrote: »

There are a few issues with that image

Apple will not pay for 230.000 houses to be heated so there is little use to compare like that.
It's not like we can power all those homes if Apple doesn't build the datacentre

Is Athenry going to be a 360MW centre? Today the biggest ones use 150 MW

If all of Ireland's wind farms produce close to 3000MW, that means this one centre will use up 15% or so of all the energy, essentially depriving existing homes and factories of energy.

I think you are misinterpreting the data. It's saying that the data centre would consume the equivalent electrical energy as 230 K houses, not that there were plans for the centre to provide heat to them. It isn't referring to heating at all.

The plan called for a possible eventual expansion to 8 halls, so as those articles state, if it reached that maximum configuration it would be the single largest electricity consumer in the state.

If you look, there are articles stating that there is a maximum that wind power can be expanded to for grid operational reasons, being 40% of the total. It was pointed out by detractors that this would called into question Apple's claim the centre would be 100% renewables powered. Apple 'assumed' they could persuade other actors to expand capacity to satisfy their requirements.

Balf

cnocbui wrote: »

The plan called for a possible eventual expansion to 8 halls, so as those articles state, if it reached that maximum configuration it would be the single largest electricity consumer in the state.

IIRC, that's what killed the project. They sought permission to build a massive facility - probably much bigger than they'd any practical intention to actually build.

And the Courts said, after lengthy appeals, "that's mad". Probably, entirely correctly as they (again, IIRC) had to admit they had done nothing to establish whether the necessary infrastructure would actually be in place to generate all that energy and pipe it to a field near Athenry.

irishfire

threeball wrote:

Just because it will doesn't mean it should. You were talking rubbish earlier on about CHP. What the hell would a data centre want with a CHP, 60% heat energy, 30% electricity and the rest wasted so 30% efficient in terms of what the data centre wants in the first place which is electricity. I know you don't give a damn about carbon emissions or penalties as long as "progress" is made but at least have some clue about the technologies you're claiming will somehow bypass these problems. And just because you generate on site doesn't mean it won't be penalised.

Why shouldn't it go ahead? Because they aren't building it in Eyre Square and heating the city of Galway off it? If they were to do district heating would you be happy to have it within a distance of your home that it could technically and commercially be piped into your area?

If you want to take the time to read what I said about CHP it related to the grid at a higher level and to industry more generally where heat is the main demand, absolutely nothing to do with powering a DC, but how our generation mix is distributed at the moment, but you can't disagree with anything else I've said so you'll take that out of context and attack it.

I know a lot more than you about these technologies than you going by you're arguements so far. Especially about our fuel mix and how it's going to evolve. I'd like to see nothing more than Ireland being powered fully renewably, but we can't at the moment. We don't have constant renewables that can replace baseload, we don't have any meaningful storage that can attempt to make up for that, and we don't have the grid infrastructure to take advantage of West coast renewables.

The problem here is this creation of an appearance that they're going to turn on a server rack in Athenry and the lights will dim in Ballinasloe and the sea level will rise half a meter. It's simply not the case, it's lies, it's deceptive to the general public and it's what prevents us from achieving anywhere near what this country can achieve.

Some particular facility is the largest consumer of power in Ireland at the moment, and I can tell you for fact that they are a whole number percentage of the our electricity demand, just because that facility becomes a DC doesn't change the fact that it's being consumed either way. What percentage of our usage is DCs at the moment do you think?

If you want to use all renewable energy at home, you install air to water, solar, and a micro-turbine. Sign up with Airtricity even, if you really want to shout about using all renewables. It's small scale and it's viable. The better the grid gets in time with the quantity and handling of renewables, the less impact you will have when importing.

If I need a large amount of energy for a DC, I pay ESB for a grid connection, trade on the electricity and take advantage of the renewable energy available to buy there. If I want to build my own generation I'm welcome to as every other wind farm owner has. At the end of the day it's up to ESB or generators in general to move towards renewables and tip the balance of our fuel mix. Not a private company that isn't in the business of generating power.

The fact will remain that you can't expect everyone who wants power to provide their own, renewably, just because we haven't been able to get it onto our grid. While it's possibly just about viable for houses, the cost is prohibitive for industrial sites. And no amount of airy fairy heating houses or whatever else will change that.

Markcheese

Any data centre is going to have its biggest cooling demand in the summer.... Which is when houses have the lowest demand for heating, so would it really be any use? 5 (ish) months with little or no heat demand...

salmocab

Markcheese wrote: »

Any data centre is going to have its biggest cooling demand in the summer.... Which is when houses have the lowest demand for heating, so would it really be any use? 5 (ish) months with little or no heat demand...

Outside temps don’t affect the heat produced too much. The servers are running the same all year and produce a huge amount of heat, the energy consumption of a DC is fairly stable with not much by way of spiking demands. In the winter they are still dumping heat out of the halls and plenty of it. They might just have fans running a bit slower at the time and not using water pumps.

pure.conya

Johnny Poor Lemonade wrote: »

sickening the protestors would be a reason enough for me to want to see a data Centre go ahead there now on top of the long list of other benefits.

and here it is, one of the main reasons I'm absolutely delighted this wasn't built, some of you lot are funkin nuts and ye haven't a true grasp of the damage yer totally ignorant views can cause