Google’s compute cycles could go to the lowest energy bidder

Google has been more and more forthcoming over the past year about just how it handles power within its computing centers.

Here’s an article that describes Google elimination of chillers in its data center in Belgium.  The facility relies entirely on free air cooling. The maximum temperature in Brussels during summer reaches maybe 71 degrees, while Google maintains its data centers at temperatures above 80 degrees, so the same scenario wouldn’t work in, say, Dallas. But what happens when Belgium has a scorcher and it zooms up to the 70s? Google shuts down the center and shifts the workload elsewhere in its global network.

 “The ability to seamlessly shift workloads between data centers also creates intriguing long-term energy management possibilities, including a “follow the moon” strategy which takes advantage of lower costs for power and cooling during overnight hours. In this scenario, virtualized workloads are shifted across data centers in different time zones to capture savings from off-peak utility rates.” 

A geographically diverse company like Google could shift its computing loads around to follow low night-time power costs. But it also seems likely that utilities could also bid to fill Google’s computing power needs. States would want to have Google crunch its servers using their utilities power so that they would get the extra utilities tax. And utilities would want to bid to get the extra Google business. (Actually, this probably wouldn’t happen in California, where utilities are incentivized to sell less power, not more.)

So, rather than follow the moon, it would be, as always, “Follow the money.”