Icelandic data center run on 100 percent renewable energy | Hacker News Reader

Icelandic data center run on 100 percent renewable energy

itworld.com

55 pointsjfruh15 comments

One of the biggest server hosting providers in germany ,hetzner, uses 100% renewable energy since a few years. (http://www.hetzner.de/hosting/unternehmen/umweltschutz)

FYI, this is pretty easy in a country that has boiling hot water and steam right below the surface.

There are a lot of buildings in Iceland that run on renewable energy, this isn't anything new or exciting.

Yep, Iceland is blessed with way, way more exploitable geothermal energy per capita than any other country. In fact, their geothermal power per capita is 40 times as much as the next runner up, New Zealand.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_geo_pow_use_percap-geo...

Unfortunately, geothermal isn't exportable.

Yes it is - you just currently export the entropy in the form of Aluminium reduced from Aluminium oxide, in the future you will export it in the form of bits.

Note that geothermal energy is not - in general - considered a renewable energy. The source will loose energy over time.

That is not a problem for Iceland of course, since strong volcanic activity makes sources very reliable. If it's not causing earthquakes.

Solar energy is also not forever and technically not renewable. The time horizon is what's interesting, that's what makes solar energy renewable.

So what's the time horizon for geothermal energy? If it's more than a millenium I would have no problem calling geothermal energy renewable.

'runs' on 100 percent renewable energy. I hate British English so much.

It runs on 100% renewable energy. Is built to run on 100% renewable energy.

Grammatically totally different cases of 'run'

I'm British and 'runs' sounds correct to me too in this case. It looks like a typo to me.

This could go several ways:

Icelandic data center [being] run on 100 percent renewable energy

Icelandic data center [that is] run on 100 percent renewable energy

Icelandic data center [is] running on 100 percent renewable energy

Icelandic data center [that] runs on 100 percent renewable energy

I was thinking it was along these lines:

Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996...

(first line in Wiki article)

This is correct. Headlines are often written in the passive voice, e.g. 'Iraq Bombed' rather than 'So and so bombed Iraq'.

Or indeed 'Icelandic Data Center [was] run on 100% renewable energy [as a temporary experiment].' Oh grammar.

I'm the original submitter and I'm American and I did intend to write "runs!" Ugh. But: I do agree that one could interpret the headline as "data center [is] run on..." Wasn't my intention though. Even in British English I don't think it would be right to use "run" in the active voice though. "IceLandCo run on renewable energy," yes, but "data center" is conceptually singular even to the Brits. Also, it would be a "data centre" probably. OK, I'll stop now.

The British (more specifically the English) are the original creators of the English language.

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