Google Buys Old Semiconductor Plant To Make $600M Data Center

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It's nice to see an old semiconductor plant repurposed like this. Google officials say they want the facility to become "one of the world's most efficient and most technically advanced data center campuses" and have set a goal to offset one hundred percent of their energy use with renewable energy.

The company ended all speculation, announcing it has acquired the former Hemlock Semiconductor site in northeastern Montgomery County and will be transforming it into a $600 million data center to serve Google's vast and rapidly growing Internet search engine and overall application capacity. The news was confirmed to The Leaf-Chronicle first by Joe Kava, Google vice president for Data Center Operations, in a phone interview from his office in Mountain View, Calif.
 
God I would love to check it out. That DC must be huge. The renewable energy tidbit is really cool too. It would be nice not needed a diesel generator at our site.
 
The renewable energy tidbit is really cool too. It would be nice not needed a diesel generator at our site.
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I thought renewable energy would not change the need for backup power.
 
drescherjm said:
I thought renewable energy would not change the need for backup power.
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Depends on how it's deployed. They could store the power generated by renewable energy onsite and depending on the size of the storage, it could act as a backup. That would have to be a gigantic energy storage system though.
 
TVA is a lot of hydro, which can be/is used to balance power (gravity is rather good at this!)
 
nutzo said:
I guess tax payers money and other subsidies are now considered "renewable energy"
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Ever wonder how it would be if companies never received such things? No tax breaks, no bail outs, no tax payer money... nothing. Forced to operate off only their profits?
 
Theres an old National Semiconductor fab in Arlington Texas that has been closed for probably 15 years. It would cost a fortune to get it up and running as a clean room now. But you have tons of infrastructure for power, air, and liquids to all parts of the fab. I could see it being ideal as a computer center.
 
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