SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Bloomberg has an article that Apple plans to spend €1.7 billion ($1.9 billion) on new data centers in Denmark and Ireland.
It seems that Apple is focusing on green technology using only renewable energy for these centers:
The centers, located in Athenry, Ireland, and Viborg, Denmark, will be powered by renewable energy, Cupertino, California-based Apple said on Monday. The facilities are scheduled to begin operations in 2017 in the two countries known for their use of wind power.
The project lets Apple address European requests for data to be stored closer to local users and authorities, while also allowing it to benefit from a chilly climate that helps save on equipment-cooling costs.
This is good news for the two countries that have invested heavily in renewable energy, especially Denmark that supplies a quarter of all windmills globally. More local coverage of this can be found at the website of Danish newspaper Politiken (Danish, Google translation here) and Irish Business ETC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:43AM
Yeah, let's waste all of that energy with idiotic electronic devices!!! We are very good at doing that!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @01:57PM
What they need is a really big shark tank for Tim to jump over...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday February 24 2015, @12:11PM
while also allowing it to benefit from a chilly climate that helps save on equipment-cooling costs
Any other "costs" they might saving on by basing themselves in Ireland...?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 24 2015, @01:42PM
Yeap: act as a snitch for NSA [soylentnews.org] with impunity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @12:50PM
Now I want to buy even more Apple products.
Cause they want to be GREEN!
That means they really care about the environment, right?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:54PM
Perhaps they misread the map. Denmark ain't cold in comparison with some other countries in that region.
Oh, and when the sea rises, Tim's datacenter on that flat country will get wet ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @05:06PM
They can tout the green angle all they want, but the real reason for setting up in Ireland is tax evasion.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday February 24 2015, @06:15PM
Apple certainly won't be setting up in Denmark as a tax haven.
however, if you add together the fact that the Danes are world leaders in power generation from wind; and Apple are poaching battery engineers from Tesla, I would not be surprised if Apple are looking to even out the variable amounts of power available from wind with 'building batteries'. The Danes are the most experienced in the world in managing power fluctuations as their national grid has the highest percentage of power generated from wind of any country in the world.
The elephant in the room is that there is no known battery technology that scales sufficiently (or economically) to be able to even out the power fluctuations for a national grid so that it can be run from wind and battery alone. You might be able to do it for a data-centre, and I would not be surprised if Apple demonstrate this, but it is currently not feasible for a country - even one as small as Denmark.
Here's a couple of papers on the background:
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10527/1/Kerestes_J_Robert_112911.pdf [pitt.edu]
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/42273/InTech-Techno_economic_analysis_of_different_energy_storage_technologies.pdf [intechopen.com]
The main issue is that the capital cost of batteries needs to drop, and a side issue is having enough raw materials to build grid-level battery storage. While Lithium is not in particularly short supply now, there isn't enough currently easily available to build grid-level storage systems from Lithium-ion batteries. I've seen a paper analysing this requirement, but can't find it now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:32PM
Another way they could help level out the grid is by quickly bringing servers on-line (and taking them off-line). Wind starts to blow, Apple customers get faster response times. Wind dies down and they have to wait a little longer for their data fix...