Will Central WA wild fires cause problems for Air Cooled Data Centers in Quincy, WA?

The wild fires in Central WA are at an interesting junction of getting bigger or snuffing each other out.

2 wildfires may become 1: help or hindrance to firefighters?

As Washington state's two biggest wildfires burn toward each other, fire officials say they could either feed off each other, creating a more volatile conflagration, or they could consume all available fuel and help snuff each other out.

For those of you not familiar with the air here is a map from Cle Elum where the fires are strongest to Quincy, WA.

Here is the state ecological update.

Specifically, Ecology and Forest Service air-quality monitors in Chelan County are reading in the hazardous and unhealthy ranges. Poorer conditions are trending in the Quincy area and conditions could worsen around Spokane, Pullman and Clarkston.

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All residents in the Wenatchee area should stay indoors and curtail their physical activities both indoors and out. Doors and windows should remain closed. In the remainder of the Yakima and Columbia basins common sense precautions should be taken by everyone, but sensitive groups -- such as children, the elderly and heart patients -- are particularly vulnerable.

The biggest health threat comes from the fine particles in smoke. These can cause burning eyes, runny nose, bronchitis and other illnesses. Smoky air also can aggravate pre-existing heart and lung diseases, and even lead to death.

Air filtration systems are probably getting inspected as the fire continues to burn.

Here is a news video showing how bad the smoke can be.

GreenM3 going to Blackberry Jam Conference, San Jose Sept 25-27

i have been spending a lot of time working on some mobile solutions lately.  Building on the PC is so in the past.  My main phone is an iPhone 4S.  No I am not upgrading to the iPhone 5.  I have a Samsung Galaxy Note for a phabet experience and a Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Verizon to compensate for the AT&T devices.

At GigaOm Mobilize I ran into some ex-Windows 95 friends who now work at Blackberry and shared some ideas.  They said hey why don't you go to our Blackberry Jam Conference in SJ next week.

So, I may add the Blackberry 10 Dev Alpha to my iOS and Android devices.

Apple Electric adds 200 Acres for more Solar capacity

I joked that Google is an Electric company in an old post.  If Apple was an Electric company would it be Apple Electric or Apple Power? Apple made the news making progress on its solar farm, and now has added another 200 acres.

Hickory Daily Record reports on the latest real estate transaction.

CONOVER, NC — California-based technology giant Apple has spent nearly $3 million to buy more than 200 acres of property in Catawba County for another solar farm.

It’s another step in Apple’s pledge to have its Maiden data center running on 100 percent renewable energy by the end of the year.

Some of the concerns with the big data center expansion in Oregon is the future growth of data centers there could be 10% of the energy use.

If ever a state was destined to become a data center Mecca it is Oregon. As the author of the article points out they have a temperate climate, cheap power, no sales tax or property tax for data centers located in state-designated enterprise zones. All these elements combine to provide an explanation for the plethora of “Greetings From Oregon” postcards emanating from the likes of Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon and other data center operators. So far so good. However, after much sleuthing and analysis the good citizens of the area have uncovered a heretofore hidden truth—these things use one heck of a lot of electricity. So much electricity in fact that current estimates indicate, and I quote, “they (data centers) could devour nearly 10 percent of all the Northwest’s energy by 2030”.

But, with Apple being an electric company  the protests of impacting the local energy grid will soon be a mute point.

Where is the 5th Google data center site for LATAM?

The Google guys are really smart. And, like to have 5 data centers within 100MS to support a geographic region.  i wrote about 4, Where is the 5th?

My guess is the 5th is in NAP of America's Miami where many serve the LATAM market.

Some Int'l Electricity Tariff data, that's why data centers are where they are

The price and availability are critical for data centers to exist.  The Economist has an article on Brazil's Electricity Tariff, and what caught my attention is the range of Electricity Tariffs.

How electricity tariffs are used in each country to tax consumption in industries and consumers has an interesting impact on where you will put your data center.

The cost of electricity is bumped up by 28 different taxes which together account for almost half the average bill, according to Acende Brasil, an energy-research institute. As a result, energy prices for industrial users are extraordinarily high (see chart). Ms Rousseff announced that from early next year two taxes will go altogether and a third one will be slashed by three-quarters. Officials say further savings will come from having driven a hard bargain with generating companies over extending contracts due to expire soon. All in all, residential bills will fall by an average of 16%, and industrial ones by 19-28%, they say.

Brazilians spend twice as much on the electricity costs built into other goods and services as on their own residential bills, calculates FIPE, a research institute at the University of São Paulo. High energy tariffs can be passed on to the consumer in this way partly because Brazil’s economy is fairly closed. This shows little sign of changing. On September 4th the government announced a year-long rise in import tariffs on 100 goods, ranging from tyres to medicines, to protect Brazilian manufacturers. Another 100 items may be added to the list next month.