Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : Green Hosting : Going green while completely reliant on reliable energy

[RapidRick]

How is this is even possible?

Datacenters/hosters are converting energy into fiber pulses. Is there a datacenter on earth which solely uses solar/wind/geothermal to power their pdus? I very much doubt it.

Do people really think that going green means purchasing carbon credits?

The green phenomenon worked out great for Spain - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-1...s-founder.html

Going green is a marketing ploy.

[Aussie Bob]

Yeah, for sure some hosts have put up the green banners by buying carbon credits and whatnot, and yeah, it's more about marketing and wanting to tap into a current out there in the market.

It is possible to build a DC off the grid, but I wouldn't suggest it. You would just need a LOT of solar panels and a LOT of batteries, and you can make your own power and be off the grid. That's possible, it's just expensive and batteries are very non environmentally friendly, in their manufacturing and disposal of.

The problem with DCs is that they use LOTS of power, so a current DC could build their own solar farm on their roof or next to them if they have the room, that is grid connected. So during the day they would use the energy from their solar farm and at night pull energy off the grid.

[RapidRick]

What you described is true. Finding an investor who would construct such an earth-saving venture is impossible.

[BurstNET]

The only way to go completely green is to die and be buried and let the Earth reuse your body as plant mulch.

Other than that you can try to do the best you can, but even manufacturing the solar panels and windmills takes much power usage and environmental resources.
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[cleeon]

yep, i have same mind here, go green on some place just become "one of business promotion way"

is i am right or wrong ?

[Aussie Bob]

Originally Posted by BurstNET

. . . Other than that you can try to do the best you can, but even manufacturing the solar panels and windmills takes much power usage and environmental resources.

Manufacturing anything leaves a carbon footprint, so the answer is not to stop manufacturing.

Datacentres with access to adequate roof space can install arrays of solar panels, connected to the grid without using batteries. That's probably the best way to offset the amount of power coming off the grid, but you'd need a lot of solar panels to have any serious offset effect of the average DC's energy needs.

A green webhost is an oxymoron at best.

[plumsauce]

Originally Posted by Aussie Bob

Yeah, for sure some hosts have put up the green banners by buying carbon credits and whatnot, and yeah, it's more about marketing and wanting to tap into a current out there in the market.

And some of them just rewrite the copy on their pitch pages while forgetting about even buying the carbon credits.

[semoweb]

Going green seems to be the new thing how ever power will be super hard to be completly green

[brentpresley]

Guess it depends on the degree of energy savings you need to define as "going green".

For our company, when we moved from dedicated servers to AppLogic for cloud business we cut down from 8+ racks of servers in one datacenter to just one rack. The overall power draw went down proportionally as well.

Those savings worked for us both financially and from a "green" perspective, but we never went to buying green credits or paying for 100% wind energy or the like.

[RapidRick]

I guess we are all waiting for one of these hosts that advertise "green hosting" to chime in. We all seem to be in agreement that it is total bs.

[petteyg359]

Everybody always talks about solar and wind. There are other forms of "green" energy.

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/unt...n/umweltschutz

[RapidRick]

I am extremely doubtful that any investor is going to run a datacenter on 100% renewable power. I attached a picture of the battery room in the datacenter we colo in. Good luck keeping that charged without co2!

[astutiumRob]

Originally Posted by RapidRick

Is there a datacenter on earth which solely uses solar/wind/geothermal to power their pdus?

Yes (water produced), although we still have to have diesel for the 2N+ generators, so not 100% "carbon" friendly in an outage situation.

[cleeon]

do not too over when using energy, is one of easy way to support "go green"

[RahulK5]

It is not possible to make the whole big data center work upon green energy. Though we can minimize the energy consumption at first.

Putting solar panels sounds good in hot weathers, but what will cool of those DC's which are beneath them.

There must be sustainable, govt. initiatives on such matter, I think govt. DC's should start upon thinking about this.