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lightknight7777 t1_itw17kn wrote

Reply to comment by Willinton06 in Microsoft says the global energy crisis can cost the company $800 million more in energy costs this year by chrisdh79

Who said anything about climate change? I'm talking about their energy shortfall. That's plenty to workshop a solution and begin implementing it in a profitable and effective manner.

Solving a problem isn't resolving the problem. It's figuring out how to resolve the problem.

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FallenJoe t1_itwkt5n wrote

Enormous amounts of time and money go into making datacenters more energy efficient, both in the design of computing equipment and in the physical design of heat control within them. If there was a solution that could fix energy issues for a measly 800 million , it would have been done years ago.

Unfortunately, due to the need to have datacenters around the world to service various regions (over 200 geographically separate datacenters just for Azure), there is no easy solution that's just going to resolve the issue.

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lightknight7777 t1_itwldm4 wrote

I'm not talking about making the centers more efficient, I'm talking about getting into producing energy. Prices don't really go up or down if you're the producer. It's always just cost.

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FallenJoe t1_itwm7jz wrote

....Prices are up for Microsoft primarily because in Europe the input cost of gas and coal fired power stations is going up due to major increases in the cost of fuel, and the increased cost of generating power is getting passed on to the consumers. This is not something that changes just because you own the power station.

Real life isn't Simcity, you don't buy a power plant for 500k, slap it down, and get 200,000MW at a fixed cost indefinitely.

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lightknight7777 t1_itwmj1i wrote

It absolutely does if you use solar, wind, geothermal or anything not so dependent on an oligarichal supply chain. If they make a coal or gas plant then they're idiots.

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FallenJoe t1_itwnjcc wrote

"Lets heavily invest in power sources that don't provide consistent power, so that we can power our datacenters that requires 100% power uptime with absolutely no downtime" is a bit of a ridiculous take.

They're not idiots, which unsurprisingly means that they're just continuing to buy power from existing power suppliers instead of dumping what would a decade of work and tens of billions of dollars of construction into getting a slightly better power rate in Europe.

There is no magic handwaving solution to energy prices that's going to take effect quickly, because if there were, people would already be doing them. There's no reason for Microsoft to get into the power business when any economically feasible plan can be done by another party. The slightly better power rate isn't worth the massive cost, financial risk, and regulatory exposure across multiple countries that would be required.

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lightknight7777 t1_itwnlxu wrote

Batteries exist.

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FallenJoe t1_itwo5xc wrote

And there are many reasons why they are not used on a large scale.

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lightknight7777 t1_itwohkn wrote

looks at Australia

Disagree. There are several very large battery systems implemented now. The reason why there aren't a ton is because solar has only really been viable for a decade.

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FallenJoe t1_itwtwps wrote

There's a very large difference between using batteries as an intermediate point and temporary storage point for input into the grid, and using them as a primary power source for datacenters, which are one of the most energy intensive operations around. The longer you need to store power, the less economically viable battery use is. Even if you had enough perfectly consistent (hah!) solar/wind generation nearby to power your facility, the battery levels required to keep the facility powered would be prohibitive.

I am a network engineer who works in both larger datacenters and smaller network closets/hubs, and even the battery backup required to keep a single crowded vertical network rack running for a few hours in the event of a power outage is hundreds of pounds and waist high. Scaling that out to large datacenter levels of power consumption and overnight capacity and you're talking completely absurd levels of expensive power storage capability.

And again, if there's a good location for a cheap and green new power installation, it's not really to Microsoft's benefit to get into the power business. It's 100% going to be cheaper for Microsoft to let someone else build and run a power plant that feeds into the general grid and just take advantage of the lower aggregate power cost.

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lightknight7777 t1_itx38br wrote

Those backups are just for emergency outages. Actual grid batteries are far more efficient.

Power companies routinely take advantage of customers. You're acting like they don't make money when they operate.

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Willinton06 t1_itw1i3d wrote

I actually meant to write “the energy crisis” but my mind was in another post I guess, my bad, but I guess Microsoft could solve it’s own energy issues for 800 million, not the entire energy crisis but maybe the piece that affects them

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