Well, Google is considering to deploy data centres necessary to operate their search engine on barges powering and cooling computers…
Sounds strangely? Just read below!
Computing centres are located on a ship or ships, anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away.
This text was somehow seen by The Times in this patent application written by Google… Rather interesting article is published at their site. As for me, I didn’t know that Microsoft is planning to build data centres in cold climes of Siberia or that Sun is going to place its supercomputers in abandoned coal (see cold) mine…
By the way all data centers around the world consumed about 1% of all electricity in 2005. How do you think, what would be in 2009? 
Useful Links:
Data Center Knowledge
Discussion at Slashdot
Welcome to Linux Screw! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe our RSS feed.
Even though this sounds like a radical idea to reduce the power cost, the maintenance cost of such data centers may be very huge. This is definitely a very interesting concept.
Also, regarding your question: “How do you think, what would be in 2009?”, I would just quote the same article from timesonline:
“Data centres consumed 1 per cent of the world’s electricity in 2005. By 2020 the carbon footprint of the computers that run the internet will be larger than that of air travel, a recent study by McKinsey, a consultancy firm, and the Uptime Institute, a think tank, predicted. ”
Ramesh
The Geek Stuff
What are the financial implications of moving into international waters?
I loved your article and the information that are provided. There are thousands of ideas out there that are both good and bad. If you know of any more information concerning travel tips or associated topics, that would be most appreciated. Keep up the great writing!
You, my pal, ROCK! I found just the info I already searched all over the place and simply couldn’t locate it. What a perfect web-site.
Informative article. Also take a look at these great Photoshop video tutorials.
I’ve recently started a web site, and the info you provide on this web site has helped me a lot. Thank you for all of your time & work.
I think other web-site owners should take this site as an model – very clean and wonderful style and design, as well as the content. You’re an expert in this area!
I have been absent for a while, but now I remember why I used to love this blog. Thank you, I’ll try and check back more frequently. How frequently do you update your website?
Great – I should certainly say I’m impressed with your website. I had no trouble navigating through all the tabs and related information. It ended up being truly easy to access. Excellent job.
I would like to thank you for the efforts you have put in writing this web site. I’m hoping the same high-grade site post from you in the future as well. In fact your creative writing skills has inspired me to get my own website going now. Actually blogging is spreading its wings and growing rapidly. Your write up is a great example.
It is in reality a nice and helpful piece of info. I’m glad that you just shared this useful tidbit with us. Please keep us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.
Certainly I like your website, but you need to test the spelling on quite a few of your posts. Many of them are rife with spelling issues and I find it very troublesome to inform you. On the other hand I’ll certainly come again again!
Great write-up. I am a regular visitor of your blog and appreciate you taking the time to maintain the excellent site. I will be a regular visitor for a long time.
Greetings from Australia. Great post. I am a normal visitor of your web site and appreciate you taking the time to maintain the nice site. I will be a frequent visitor for a really long time.
I was just searching for this info for a while. After 6 hours of continuous Googleing, at last I got it in your site. I wonder what is the Google’s problem that does not rank this type of informative web sites closer to the top. Usually the top sites are full of garbage.
Good – I should certainly say I’m impressed with your site. I had no trouble navigating through all the tabs as well as related information. It ended up being truly easy to access. Nice job.