Wind powered computer farms

Please have a look at the world wind power potential map [link].

Then have a look at the world's high speed fibre-optic submarine cable map, which connects the continents [link].

Now combine them: there's plenty of top wind on the Aleutian Archipelago, and this place is near to the transpacific lines. The same with Newfoundland, near to the transatlantic lines. Both hubs serve a huge market (the East-Asian - North American market, and the European - North American market).

Both these regions have lots of windpower potential, but nobody lives there, so it's not feasible to put wind turbines there to transport electricity to populated centres.

The only reason we are putting wind turbines there is to power our huge server farm, which is naturally cooled by the chilly temperatures of the Aleutians and Newfoundland.

Instead of exporting the electricity over long distances, which would involve huge line-losses, we export data and computing power, through our fibre-optic submarine cable, which is connected to main, existing cables.

Energy is becoming the single most important cost in server farms and data centres [link].

As the joke now goes: "utilities will soon begin to offer you a free server farm if you sign a power contract with them."

Peak oil, the world's energy crisis, may soon turn into a planetary computing crisis, a Google engineer warns. [link]