UK Holds Talks on How To Avoid Blackouts at Major Data Centers (bloomberg.com) 54
UK government officials held detailed discussions with some of the biggest data center operators about ways to keep those businesses running through any potential power shortages in coming months, Bloomberg News reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. From a report: The talks focused on allocating diesel for backup generators if Britain's energy infrastructure operator, National Grid, needed to cut power, the people said, asking not to be named because the discussions are private. The sides also discussed whether data centers should be considered critical national infrastructure. There are between 400 and 600 commercial data centers in Britain, and they account for about 2.5% of the country's electricity demand, according to the National Grid. Operators often have their own backup generators that can run for as many as 72 hours, but businesses and officials have discussed the security of supplies in scenarios where disruptions worsen. Slough, west of London, is one of Europe's biggest hubs for server farms and would need more fuel for backup than other areas.
Easy Solution (Score:4, Funny)
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A: Electricity.
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The conservatives have been in power for 12 years.
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Joke's on you, the UK has had Conservative government since 2010, and it's been getting harder and harder right since then.
In fact the last time Britain couldn't keep the lights on, it was due to a Conservative government making basically the same mistakes as the current one.
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more like an button the actives the high voltage gang switch.
or the or one that you need to pump before you can change it
Not just the data centers ... (Score:2)
but also the interconnects ... not much point in having a data center if no one can reach it.
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Maybe it will be discovered that rolling blackouts will be causing more trouble than it solves.
Imagine if you can't turn on the power again because the data connectivity is lost and you need to send out someone to manually engage the breaker again.
Then imagine that it's a snow storm that day.
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Freeze and starve for Ukraine!
Well what a surprise (Score:1)
Guess what the government thinks is more important in case of a blackout: keeping Google and Facebook running or keeping people's light and heater on...
Disgusting... If there isn't enough power to go around, people should get power first, not fucking datacenters.
Then again, it's all bullshit to scare the populace. Most likely there won't be any blackout at all.
Re: Well what a surprise (Score:5, Informative)
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Almost every company now is migrating to "The Cloud" - a solution that's actually someone else's computer.
Your business in Berlin, Germany can't do anything because the servers are in a server hall in London that's without power. Or that the network hub that you connect through is in Calais.
(Locations are just examples.)
Then imagine that there's a Nord Stream event on some underseas optical cables to add icing on that cake.
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a solution that's actually someone else's computer.
Someone else's computer is often better managed than the people who are migrating to it were ever capable of.
Then imagine that there's a Nord Stream event on some underseas optical cables to add icing on that cake.
Don't need to. Nord Stream is a poor example. "Cloud" datacentres are geographically diverse and redundant. Data networks are interconnected and provide different routes to hosts. The only time someone is badly affected by such a "Nord Stream event", it's because they bought the cheap package without any of the benefits the Cloud has to offer.
Also the UK's number of datacentres are not out of the ord
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You are basically repeating what the ads for cloud services states.
But you forget that there are locations that don't have any local datacenters and that have few connections to the rest of the world. So the Nord Stream example is a VERY real example that now are in the consideration for large companies.
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Just because it's an advert doesn't mean it's wrong.
But you forget that there are locations that don't have any local datacenters
I'm not forgetting anything. At no point did I say the cloud was the singular solution for everyone. We're talking about London and Germany here with local datacentres in the hundreds. Your Nord Stream analogy is quite wrong in basically all of Europe.
If you wanted to talk about some pacific island nation, then you should have opened with that.
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If you go back you'll see that I just made an example using well-known locations.
I'm still on the position that the cloud services is that you put all your eggs in a basket belonging to someone else together with a lot of eggs from others. And therefore I'd expect one huge disaster when things start to get sour. There are also a lot of cross-dependencies today and until all cross-dependency failures that appears have been resolved we'll see a lot of stumbling. We have seen issues before, so it's not new tho
Not a Surprise (Score:3)
If you think Google and Facebook are what they are concerned about
Have you seen the ineptitude of this current government? I'd not be surprised at all if Google and Facebook are exactly what they are worried about because they are that clueless. They are barely a month into power with two weeks of that being inaction due to the Queen's funeral and just look at their economic track record of utter incompetence.
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Google and Facebook are the nation's surveillance infrastructure. It's like 1984, only it isn't the TV that's watching you, it's the device you keep in your pocket and use continually all day long. The government will keep this going at all cost, as it's their way of controlling the people without the people realizing they're being surveilled and controlled.
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Then again, it's all bullshit to scare the populace. Most likely there won't be any blackout at all.
Logically there shouldn't be blackouts. The UK has it's own supplies of gas and it has gas terminals. However the UK has been closing gas storage [theguardian.com] and is exporting gas and oil [theguardian.com] instead of keeping some in reserve. Total incompetence would be needed for there to be a problem but I believe the UK government has shown clearly that they can achieve that.
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The UK's domestic production of oil and gas isn't enough to meet domestic consumption and hasn't been for some time. There are enough gas import terminals here to meet demand so long as sufficient LNG is available to buy on the global market (the EU doesn't have sufficient LNG import capacity, which is why it's being imported here, regasified, and exported to the EU via pipelines). The worst-case scenario they're worried about is one where there isn't enough gas available to buy globally, which will be a su
Re: Well what a surprise (Score:2)
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We're currently selling electricity to the EU because the EU don't have enough of it. Brexit isn't the cause here, decades of pan-European power policies based on wishful thinking is.
Re:Once again Brexit really is (Score:5, Insightful)
We're currently selling electricity to the EU because the EU don't have enough of it. Brexit isn't the cause here, decades of pan-European power policies based on wishful thinking is.
Yah, I don't quite understand the argument here. "This never would have happened if Britain had stayed in the EU", but... it's the EU itself that is most likely to have energy shortages and blackouts. I don't understand how staying in the EU would have helped Britain with energy supplies when the Continent is short itself of such resources. And the current bickering seems to be kind of petty on the part of Brussels, concerning Northern Ireland trade rules. "How dare you leave, we're going to drag this out" etc etc.
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You need to stop making sense.
Nowadays anything that anyone doesn't like is attributed to something else they don't like.
The Remain tendency consists mostly of people who don't speak European languages, have never lived or worked on the Continent, don't know anything useful about the institutions of the EU, but claim to 'feel European' and for reasons they cannot articulate desperately want the UK to be part of the EU.
So, being bereft of any ideas or knowledge which would allow them to argue that the EU is
Re: Once again Brexit really is (Score:2)
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Those dasterdly Europeans, insisting the UK adheres to the deal it co-wrote, agreed and signed only to do everything it could do afterwards to wriggle out the deal the UK negotiators claimed was fantastic.
Then why aren't you using it? (Score:1)
Or is it that you can't get heat pumps installed because of labor shortages?....
Crap, there's Brexit again. It's like a bad in-law you just can't get rid of. Do they call them "in-laws" in the UK?
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The problem in the UK is that most buildings are designed for central heating with a gas boiler. To replace the boiler with a heat pump can be tricky. The heat pump needs an outdoor unit, and the radiators are usually a bit small for it.
Retrofitting is expensive and labour intensive.
There is much lower hanging fruit though, like insulation. The previous Labour government was making decent progress on that, but it all stopped once the Tories got in.
Re: Then why aren't you using it? (Score:2)
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There is much lower hanging fruit though, like insulation. The previous Labour government was making decent progress on that, but it all stopped once the Tories got in.
Everybody has known bad times were coming and that insulation was a cheap improvement for ages now, but there's been little seriousness about it in most places. We're not gonna make it.
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The frustrating thing is we made a good start. Back in the 2000s there was a scheme to get insulation installed for free. The bill was paid by the energy companies who were making massive profits, and it didn't really hurt them at all.
When we got a Tory government they failed to renew the scheme, and it was never reintroduced. That was a decade ago now. If they had carried on, at no expense to the government, we would be in a far better position now.
One more thing (Score:2)
Britain is getting screwed in those trades because of Brexit. Brexit was a trade agreement. The UK thought they were such bad asses they could go it alone. They found out otherwise.
The cost of leaving crisis hits hard (Score:1)
Project Fear was right after all.
Problem is not Brexit, its Net Zero (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is not Brexit. Its Net Zero. This is the simple explanation of how they got there.
They replaced stable coal fired power generation with wind and solar. They thought this was wonderful, as did the Guardian and the BBC, who periodically put out puff pieces explaining that in one week or day huge percentages of power were supplied by renewables.
What they did not publish is that because wind and solar are intermittent, and because solar just about vanishes during UK winters, some rapid start back up, a lot of it, was needed. What they did not report was the days and weeks when there was almost no power from renewables.
The British had some choices. They could have covered the Lake District, Scotland and Wales with dams and installed pumped hydro, but they did not. They may have thought about grid scale batteries and rightly decided they were non-starters on the grounds of cost and feasibility at scale.
The only solution available at the time, and its still true, was fast start gas. So the result of installing all that wind and solar was to increase dependence on gas generation, which they installed on a grand scale.
Everything went fine for a while, the coal plants were dismantled or mothballed, the gas rapid start capacity worked just fine, and the Guardian and BBC were happy that the country was leading the world in tackling climate change.
They also closed their gas storage facilities. Who needed them? The world was drowning in gas, and anyway, huge gas storage plants are not exactly green. They are sort of a mute testimony to your continued dependence on gas. Not a good look.
And then all of a sudden Russia invaded the Ukraine, gas supplies fell, prices soared when you could get it. Then the tide had gone out, and we all found out who had been swimming naked. it was the wind and solar generation. What had actually been happening was, its described as renewables supplemented by gas, but in fact its gas supplemented by renewables.
And this is why, when there is the usual UK winter week long blocking high and short low sun days and cold nights, the UK will likely have power outages this winter.
They have closed down reliable coal fired generation while having only gas to replace it with, when they had no secure supply of gas. This is not what they thought or said they were doing, but its what has happened. And that is why there will likely not be enough electricity this winter.
Incidentally, they are about to make a bad situation far worse. Because at the same time as making their electricity supply unreliable and insufficient to meet existing demand, they are also taking steps to at least double that demand by converting house heating (85% gas at the moment) to heat pumps, powered by electricity, and cars to EVs. At the same time they will heroically press on installing thousands of wind turbines in the North Seal.
This will have the unexpected consequence of increasing their dependence on gas to be almost total. The turbines are useless without gas to back them up. And they are doing this right at the time when gas supplies are problematic. One seabed mine on the Norwegian cables and pipelines, and its all over.
But they are doing their best to save the planet, you have to give them that. If it all works out they will probably manage to reduce their CO2 emissions from 450 million tons to something like 200 million tons.
With global emissions around 37 billion tons and rising. But every little helps, doesn't it?
Re:Problem is not Brexit, its Net Zero (Score:5, Interesting)
It is the simple explanation, it is also incomplete.
You completely missed the part where in the 80s and 90s the UK tapped into North Sea oil. Which also gave them cheap gas.
In the 90s the UK was a net exporter of gas. Gas was cheap and local.
This prompted a massive switch to gas powered everything.
Coal plants were mainly dismantled in the 90s. The first COP was in 1995. This kind of event takes 5-10 years to plan & execute.
https://euanmearns.com/uk-elec... [euanmearns.com]
Then gas was no longer local (russian? now) , but still cheap. The gas party goes on.
An here your comment comes into play.
Net zero isn't the original culprit. It prevented a rethinking of the dependence on gas, yes.
Re: Problem is not Brexit, its Net Zero (Score:2)
Re: Problem is not Brexit, its Net Zero (Score:3)
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It is the simple explanation, it is also incomplete.
You completely missed the part where in the 80s and 90s the UK tapped into North Sea oil. Which also gave them cheap gas.
In the 90s the UK was a net exporter of gas. Gas was cheap and local.
This prompted a massive switch to gas powered everything.
Coal plants were mainly dismantled in the 90s. The first COP was in 1995. This kind of event takes 5-10 years to plan & execute.
https://euanmearns.com/uk-elec... [euanmearns.com]
Then gas was no longer local (russian? now) , but still cheap. The gas party goes on.
An here your comment comes into play.
Net zero isn't the original culprit. It prevented a rethinking of the dependence on gas, yes.
Yep, Net Zero isn't the issue, in fact it's been a solution that we've diversified our energy supply away from 2 main sources (nuclear and gas). In fact with wind dropping under £50 per MwH in recent years (gas went over £140 per MwH this year) it's one of the few things keeping costs down.
Some people will go to enormous feats of mental gymnastics to blame "teh enviromentalists" (though their recent actions haven't helped their cause one bit).
The problem with gas in the UK isn't that we go
Re: Problem is not Brexit, its Net Zero (Score:2)
Re: Problem is not Brexit, its Net Zero (Score:2)
Re: Problem is not Brexit, its Net Zero (Score:2)
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Yes, of course the UK should have continued with coal! As they have found, its not possible to move just to wind. What you do when you move from coal to wind is you move from coal to gas and wind, and you thus have no independent source of generating capacity. Wind is not a source in itself. Its useless without gas to make it usable.
As it has turned out the upshot was to make the UK totally dependent on gas. 85% of UK homes are heated and provided with hot water by gas. When they moved from coal to wi
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That rant is utter bullshit. The UK moved from coal to gas long before wind was a twinkle in the green's eyes. The reason was that due to plentiful North Sea gas, generating electricity from gas was way cheaper than from coal. The UK has never got a significant proportion of it's gas requirements from Russia.
You can see the same thing playing out in the USA. Coal is dying because there are large quantities of fracked natural gas and only an idiot would continue to use a more expensive method of electrical g
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Yes, of course the UK should have continued with coal!
Ah - the climate doesn't matter then?
As they have found, its not possible to move just to wind.
The UK hasn't moved to just wind, but to gas, wind, nuclear, etc.
What you do when you move from coal to wind is you move from coal to gas and wind, and you thus have no independent source of generating capacity.
This makes no sense whatsoever.
As it has turned out the upshot was to make the UK totally dependent on gas.
It has made the UK less dependent on gas as at least some electricity is generated from another source.
85% of UK homes are heated and provided with hot water by gas.
And so the UK would be dependent on gas anyway, without other actions.
When they moved from coal to wind they adopted a method of generation which doesn't work at all without gas.
Which doesn't affect gas used for heating at all!
You cannot run off wind. You have to have storage or backup of some sort that can come online instantly, because of intermittency, and the only available one is gas.
This doesn't logically follow from your previous point.
It was a gross breach of national security to make the country totally dependent on one globally traded fuel
Coal is also globally traded.
Its even more idiotic to think you can move to wind (backed up by gas) as its main source of generation, and at the same time move the country to EVs and heat pumps thereby increasing demand
Using heatpumps, as I demonstrated would reduce the demand for gas. Wind
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The UK got hooked on gas long before "Net Zero" was even a think, because it got it cheap from the North Sea.
The problem now is that the government is unwilling to levy a windfall tax or nationalize the gas companies. They could keep selling the gas cheaply and still make plenty of money, but of course they want to sell it at market rate and make vast profits.
The boss of BP said he thought there should be a windfall tax. The boss of the company making "more money than we know what to do with", in his words.
Mandate backups + two months fuel reserves (Score:2)
Mandate data centers maintain their own backup generators with their own two month minimum fuel supply (the fuel is the cheap bit) so they do not burden the public during emergencies.
This is just a matter of money as none of the equipment is exotic.
Re: Mandate backups + two months fuel reserves (Score:2)
It's ironic... (Score:2)
Re: It's ironic... (Score:2)
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Re: It's ironic... (Score:2)
Simple answer (Score:2)
Attach Truss and her "government" to a generator, and they'll keep it running by the speed that they u-turn over stupid policies and insane policies.