It’s interesting how barnyard animals have been written up in conjunction with data centers lately – embracing the “farm” in “server farm.”
Ten thousand cows, for example, and the resulting bi-product of their collective digestive systems, “could fulfill the power requirements of a 1-megawatt (MW) data center — the equivalent of a medium-sized data center — with power left over to support other needs on the farm.” This observation is from HP Labs in a research paper presented at the recent ASME International Conference on Energy and Sustainability.
Apparently, the heat generated by said data center can aid the anaerobic digestion of animal waste, which results in the production of methane that can be used to generate power for the data center. “This symbiotic relationship allows the waste problems faced by dairy farms and the energy demands of the modern data center to be addressed in a sustainable manner,” says HP. (I’m just hoping you don’t end up with a server farm that smells like a dairy farm.) Click here to read more about this dairy/server farm scenario.
Goats are the topic at the Yahoo! data center in Quincy, Washington. Twice a year a herd of 252 goats takes care of the invasive weeds (probably blackberries) that threaten to take over the pasture beside the facility. (Nothing was mentioned in this article about the resulting bi-product of their collective digestive systems.)
With a moo, moo here… a baa, baa there…
Interesting post.
When do you suspect we will see plants that run off of the bi-products of animals? I heard about this idea a few years ago and it would be exciting to see this plan in action.