Joe Kava, the VP of data centers for Google, kicked off his presentation with seven years of data center history at Google. So first, the timeline:

• 2005: This is when Google used containers in its data center, where IT hardware is integrated into the data center space.
• 2006: Google created a purpose-built data center where it moved from containers to its own data center design.
• 2007: Google addressed the supply chain issues with “modular at scale” to support the cost-effective and faster way to build out its data center capacity.
• 2008/2009: In this year, metrics like PUE and best practices are used and shared.
• 2010: Google launches its renewable energy efforts, spending over a billion dollars on the initiative. It has reached 260 MW of renewable energy acquired by 2012.
• 2011: A year for standards — the data center group meets ISO and OHSAS certifications.

This year’s theme is transparency.

Google sharing seven years worth of data center initiatives is unheard of in the data center industry where secrecy is a standard practice. As an example of this transparency, Google has shared data showing that it has improved its data center mechanical systems over the past four years, reducing the energy use in electrical and cooling systems by 42 percent.

During the third quarter of 2008, Google’s electrical and cooling systems across all of its data centers used 21 watts for every 100 watts of IT load. In the second quarter of this year, it used only 12 watts for every 100 watts of IT load. In the data center industry, we would call this a power usage effectiveness of 1.12.

After seven years of data center development, Google shared its vision of modular, cost-effective designs that reduce the lead times to deliver data center capacity. Six years ago, it took 16 months for Google to build its data center in Atlanta. Now, Google can react much more quickly as buildings are built to add capacity at rates measured in months not years.

The inside of the data center looks like no other, as Google has prioritized being flexible and efficient while basing its total costs of ownership for IT over a life cycle as short as seven years. This is the accounting depreciation schedule for capex to build data centers and IT hardware, and takes into account operational expenditures. It is not uncommon for legacy data centers to have a life cycle that corresponds to the depreciation of the data center building at 27 years. Google is updating its data center mechanical infrastructure in the same way a manufacturer wants the latest tooling to support production innovation.

One of the most surprising statements in another presentation by a data center provider at the conference was how low the premium for renewable energy is, yet no customers have chosen the option when presented with it. Yet Google, in thinking long-term, has made the choice to be carbon-neutral, share its efficiency best practices and make it a priority to have a sustainability strategy.

Kava’s presentation had more than 45 slides and went into a deep dive about cooling systems and water use. If you are interested in these topics, here is a post on how Google determined pumps are more efficient than fans. Here is one on the range of water sources Google uses to cool its data centers.

Google has made one of the most significant efforts to change the data center industry by embracing transparency as part of its data center strategy.

Dave Ohara is a GigaOm Pro Analyst, covering data centers, cloud and Big Data. You can read his latest research on GigaOM Pro, and also follow him on his blog and on Twitter at @greenm3.

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First things first: Decisions and costs

Our family has always tried to be green when possible. We’re avid recyclers, we tried a small composting project, we use CFL or LED bulbs throughout the house, and I can’t tell you how many solar-powered chargers I’ve tried for my mobile devices. (The most recent one is outstanding.) But we never had the money to “go solar” even though we wanted to. That changed due to a unique financial situation. In the spirit of transparency, I’m going to share the details.

My wife inherited a family member’s IRA account several years ago and the law required that the funds be liquidated over a five-year period. We got to the final year in 2011 and realized we were going to be hit with a large tax bill on the remaining IRA funds and decided to invest the funds into something with a tax incentive. After much research on solar energy — this is a great site to estimate system sizing, pricing and benefits – return on investment and such, we decided to go with solar panels, moved in part because our rear roof faces south.

It turns out that a local contractor nearby put solar panels on his office and became a certified solar panel installer. I requested a number of quotes from companies in the area, but he gave the best price at the time: $5.50 per watt. I then looked at our electricity usage for the prior year — we’re a family of four, with two full-time work-at-home people — and over-specified the system by 25 percent capacity for two reasons. We have a four bedroom house, so I planned for the next homeowner to have five occupants. And I wanted to maximize the tax benefit, which was a 30 percent federal tax credit on the entire project.

The specified 9.43 kW (DC) system turned out to be 41 panels — 230 Watts each — which produced 12.05 megawatt hours of electricity from Nov. 1, 2011 to Oct. 31, 2012. That cost us $51,865 up front, including installation, permits, inspections, parts, labor and warranty. Yup, it’s a big chunk of change but that federal tax credit totaled $15,560, which helped offset taxes on the IRA liquidation. And many states offer rebates on solar projects; ours provided us a check for around $7,100 once the system was up and running. Our net cost then was $29,205.

It’s also worth considering companies in some states offer no-money down solar panel systems: essentially you let them install a system on your property and then lease the system. The company itself reaps the incentive benefits, but you may save money on your electricity bill.

Installation of the puzzle pieces

I had thought the system would be complicated by many parts, but it’s actually quite simple. Obviously, we have the panels, which generate electricity from sunlight. All of that power is DC, or direct current, so the system needs an inverter for AC power. We considered one single inverter but instead opted for individual microinverters attached to every panel. There are several benefits to this approach.

For starters, if one panel or inverter fails, it’s easier to locate and fix the issue. Second, the microinverters feed real-time data from every panel via Ethernet over powerline  to a small web server included for monitoring purposes. I can get tons of useful information from the system. You can view most of my system details here online, for example.

The microinverters, as well as the small web server that tracks them, are made by Enphase. Each one converts the DC power from its connected panel to AC power. Each microinverter is linked to the next one in the solar panel array so essentially, these are plug-and-play devices. Each connects to the next, and the last microinverter feeds a power line, which we fed through our attic and down along the outside of our house near our electrical meter. The panels themselves are attached to the roof with aluminum framing so the install process is fairly simple: Install the frame, connect the microinverters to their respective panels, attach the panels to the frame and link the microinverters.

Because of the solar panels, two additional electrical meters were needed. We still have the original meter that measures our electricity use from the grid but a new meter is needed to measure power output and a third measures the difference between electricity created and used. More on that in bit.

So how well is the system working?

In a word: great! In this graph below — from Enlighten’s web service that creates reports from our solar panel system — you can see exactly how much energy we produced on a daily basis.

In fact, this graph gives you rough history of the weather where we live in southeastern Pennsylvania. The drops on the graph represent days with little or sun, although even on a cloudy day we make a little energy. You can also see when the days get longer and provide more direct sunlight to our roof; we’re in the downward trend now as the shortest day of the year is approaching. Here’s a look at the numbers for production and usage by month:

There’s no maintenance to the system; it’s just always working to create power when there’s enough light. I haven’t yet had to do a thing to the panels, which have a 25 year warranty, same as the microinverters. So with the solar panels then, you’d think we’d be fine during a power outage, like the one we experienced for 4 days last week. Not quite….

Different systems for different needs

One of the upfront decisions you’ll need to make when planning a solar panel system is will you still be tied to the electric grid? Or will you go off-grid? There are pros and cons to each; the former costs less up front while the latter provides stored power during the evening hours or during an outage. Since we had no power during Hurricane Sandy, you can guess which system we have: One that keeps us tied to the grid.

That means all of the power our panels create is actually fed back into the grid; we still get all of our power from our electric company in this configuration. And in the case of an outage, grid-tie systems such as ours are automatically disabled. Why? Because if we were feeding power into the grid during an outage, it would be unsafe for the workers trying to fix the outage.

To go completely off-grid and have batteries store excess power would have added approximately 20 percent to our up-front project costs. My wife felt we’d never regain that cost because we rarely have outages. During Hurricane Sandy, of course, I gave her one — and only one — light-hearted “I told you so.” And at this point, I’m reconsidering what to do for backup power, but that’s another post for another time.

Is solar right for you?

I can’t answer that question, but hopefully, I’ve provided some insights to help you decide. Having a house some south-facing roof is a must unless you plan to have panels on your grounds. Local or state incentives vary by location as well so you’ll need to check them in your area.

The biggest issue for most is likely the large up-front cost involved although you could start small and build up the system over time. I can’t argue that the costs are still high, although they should be lower now than a year ago. And the payback period — which will vary based on your system, location and energy costs without solar — can be high. Our break-even point is around 7.3 years, but that includes the home appreciation expected due to the system.

We may not be here long enough to break even but we’ve already gained an appreciation benefit from the panels. Taking advantage of the low rates, we refinanced our home last month and the added value of the solar panels was around $30,000. And why not when the next owner of this home is unlikely to have an electric bill ever? We were paying around $2,500 per year for electricity before the system was built; now build up a credit in most months. But for us, it’s not all about the money or the investment, even though we have a hedge against a rise in electricity costs: Any price increase means we’ll get more for our excess energy production.

We feel we smartly took advantage of certain tax incentives, added value to our home and are one step closer to being energy independent, save for a backup system. If I could go back in time, I’d probably add some type of battery backup. At this point, we’re making enough excess power that we’re considering a plug-in car to replace our current vehicle. Why not let the sun power our home and our wheels while cutting down on our annual gasoline costs at the same time?

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Apple was only able to build such a large solar plant to power its data center in North Carolina because it’s doing computing at such a massive scale there, said Cantrell. It just wouldn’t be cost effective for a smaller data center operator to build its own clean power project, he added.

Hrafnsson thinks that the growth in webscale computing will be so large that it will fundamentally require the use of more renewables. He also thinks that in the future Internet companies will increasingly factor in the location of low-cost and reliable clean power into the decision about where to build their data centers. Watch the entire fireside chat of their talk at our Structure: Europe event in Amsterdam.

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1. In India, there is a drought. This year’s poor monsoon is likely to lead to the third drought in 10 years. But two-thirds of the water India receives is wasted because of inadequate storage and management.
2. India just had a power outage affecting 650 million people, a population twice as large at the U.S.  Most cities in the state of Punjab faced an acute water shortage due to lack of proper co-ordination between the power and the municipal corporations.
3. Water tensions are increasing between countries like India and Pakistan.
4. Before the power grid outage India was “staring at a water drinking shortage.”
5. There is a race to tap India’s coal resources to fuel a whopping 519 GW – nearly 500 power plants – leaving behind massive deforestation and water contamination that could have a ripple effect on the environment and health inside the world’s second most-populous country and neighboring Bangladesh.  Despite places like coal mining in the Jaintia Hills of India being one of the wettest places on earth, much of the water from the Ummutha River that flows through it is no longer drinkable.

According to Andrew Revkin, The New York Times blogger: “It’d be great to think that renewable energy sources and distributed electricity generation could solve such problems, and they’re great where they work. (And India is ramping up an ambitious effort to expand solar energy.) But the reality is that grids and central power plants are a mainstay of increasingly urbanized economies. In India, that means coal will be an economic keystone for decades.”

Leaving aside the flat out failure of grid extension in India, let’s focus on a more stark reality.  The World Bank estimates that 21 percent of communicable diseases in India are water related. In India, diarrhea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths daily.

So, India’s power outage underscores a larger problem facing us.  If you had to choose between power and water, what would you choose?

Revkin’s blog might suggest he chooses power. I would choose water. But, instead, can’t we deploy solutions where we have both?

Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Power grid Old Delhi

The most amazing part of the Indian blackout story is that the country’s infrastructure did not grind to a halt. A key reason is that most of India’s most important infrastructure is backed up by diesel generators – at a cost of over US$0.45/kWh (4X what most Indian’s pay for electricity). This is by definition distributed generation. India citizens depend upon diesel because the Indian central grid is a failure. The added problem is that diesel-distributed generation is very expensive, noisy, and bad for people’s health.  Most importantly diesel subsidies in India are expected to cost the country over $24 billion this year.

This choice for distributed generation is simply the only solution that individual consumers can choose without relying on the oft-maligned Indian bureaucracy.  In the past, Indian consumers chose diesel because of their low upfront costs.   But today, the improvements in financing are allowing consumers to switch to clean energy –  gasified biomass, wind, solar and other distributed approaches at a 50 percent discount to the cost of diesel.

Regarding coal as a solution, it was reported this year that India has overtaken China as the World’s largest importer of coal.  India is building coal generation facilities as fast as it can.   But, if history is any guide, India never meets its goals on coal generation.  This is not because Indians don’t know how to build coal or because they can’t afford new coal (though costs are skyrocketing); it’s because building large new infrastructure is hard in India based on topography alone. So Andrew Revkin and others insist on poking India in the eye when they suggest that India’s solution to the recent blackouts are new coal plants.

But clearly, Revkin also misses the point on water. Water is literally killing India.

The power grid in Old Delhi

In India, like in the United States, the power sector is the single largest user of water – more than agriculture. Presuming that India could solve its problems and build more coal, they would run out of fresh water even faster.

Ten years from now, writers like Revkin will be publishing an article about how climate change and coal led to water shortages in India.  As a result, India needs to buy expensive desalinization plants. In fact, today, The World Resources Institute has a report on growing water scarcity and declining water quality, on thermal and hydroelectric power generation plants in Asia.

The sad reality is that “Utility 1.0” is more than 100 years old.  The model was a good one and gave us the economy that we enjoy today, but it has its problems. Coal is much more expensive today than it was 20 years ago, so much so that Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata companies, recently admitted that new coal power from the proposed Tata Mundra project is coming in at roughly the same cost as new solar today in India.

Worse the Tata Mundra project is in such bad shape financially from skyrocketing coal costs, he has described it as a ‘non performing asset.’ Plus, practically speaking, India simply cannot afford to pay for the infrastructure necessary to provide 100 percent household electrification using the command and control practices of the last 100 years.

Revkin is using 20^th century thinking to solve 21^st century problems. If India, and other industrialized countries had a comprehensive energy plan that included installing the least cost renewables, perhaps our choice will not come down to water or electricity.  I think we could have water and electricity – but that is not that plan that is being executed.  Others are suggesting that India execute a plan that could execute itself.

Jigar Shah is CEO of Jigar Shah Consulting and a partner with Inerjys. Shah founded SunEdison in 2003 with a new business model, the solar power services agreement business (SPSA). SunEdison now has more solar energy systems and megawatts under management than any other company.

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The report says that after a rise in cleantech support and clean power installations between 2006 and 2011, tens of billions of dollars will suddenly come to a screeching halt and tax breaks for clean power are also in danger of expiring. As the New York Times noted: “there will be a estimated 75 percent decline in federal clean technology spending by 2014 from a peak of $44.3 billion in 2009.”

The drop in U.S. support is particularly unfortunate as various clean power technologies are still more expensive than fossil fuel-based power, but some are on the brink of grid parity, like solar, with its drop in solar cell prices.

Of course, the fossil fuel industry received decades and billions of support over the years. GigaOM Pro analyst Adam Lesser looks into a report from Roger Bezdek, a 30-year energy consultant, and found that $837 billion (in 2010 dollars) in incentives were expended over the past 60 years with oil, coal and natural gas getting 70 percent of that, or $594 billion. Oil alone was the big winner with $369 billion by itself while renewable energy, defined primarily as solar and wind, has received $74 billion, about what nuclear has received.

Image courtesy of Mike Lehen.

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