Cheap, abundant renewable energy powers cluster of Quebec data centres

With immense amounts of inexpensive and renewable energy mostly generated from hydro dams, Quebec is seeing much and much tech giants mounting up power-hungry information centres successful the Canadian province.

Demand for cloud services has sent the fig of data centres soaring worldwide, and successful Quebec unsocial 50 present run wherever conscionable 39 existed 2 years ago.

Many are owned by multinationals specified arsenic Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and IBM.

Quebec's capableness is inactive tiny compared to rivals: Data Center Alley successful Ashburn, Virginia hosts 70 percent of each planetary net traffic, portion the Ile-de-France portion surrounding Paris boasts 120 information centres.

But the Canadian state is hoping to woo much companies successful this space.

In caller years, "we person seen caller players arrive, and precise large players," said Stephane Paquet, main enforcement of Montreal International, the enactment liable for the economical promotion of Canada's 3rd largest metropolis.

Google is expanding its footprint successful Quebec with the acquisition of astir 60 hectares (150 acres) connected which it volition physique its archetypal section information centre for Can$735 cardinal (US$600 million). Microsoft, besides looking to expand, has purchased onshore successful Quebec City.

French unreality computing pioneer OVHcloud, meanwhile, acceptable up 1 of its 32 information centres successful Quebec successful 2012.

Inside a erstwhile aluminium mill successful a Montreal suburb, tens of thousands of servers are stacked enactment upon row, connected by a tangle of wires. A deafening hum on with non-stop blinking reddish and greenish lights make a sensory deluge.

"The nonsubjective was to found ourselves connected the American continent and Quebec was a earthy gateway, portion offering an endless root of renewable energy. This is possibly not the lone reason, but it played a large portion successful our decision," Estelle Azemard, OVHcloud vice-president for the Americas, told AFP.

Its 10,000 quadrate metre (105,000 quadrate foot) installation is located successful Beauharnois, a fewer twelve kilometres from Montreal's downtown, adjacent a hydroelectric dam.

The institution has developed a exertion to chill its servers utilizing water, allowing it to dispense with costlier aerial conditioning.

"The situation is truly astatine the bosom of our concern model," Azemard said.

Cheap electricity

Making a important fiscal statement for relocating, Quebec boasts low-cost electricity of astir Can$0.05 per kilowatt hour, importantly cheaper than successful Europe oregon the United States.

"Our rates are among the astir advantageous successful the world," said Cendrix Bouchard, spokesperson for nationalist inferior Hydro-Quebec, which manages generation, transmission and organisation of energy successful the province.

"Companies came present due to the fact that it's cheap, but supra each due to the fact that the vigor (99 percent of it) is renewable," Paquet said to AFP.

The long, acold winters successful the French-speaking state besides trim the magnitude of vigor needed successful information centres to chill computers, helium said.

Energy-greedy information centres perpetually request to beryllium cooled to debar servers overheating.

This sector, which is facing an detonation of information traffic, emits astir 4 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, which is much than civilian aerial transport, according to a 2019 study by the French deliberation vessel The Shift Project.

In Quebec, the monthly energy depletion of information centres is astir 663 gigawatt hours (GWh), oregon the equivalent of the depletion of 40,000 households.

"It is amended to enactment information centres successful places which are supplied with hydro, star oregon adjacent atomic electricity, than supplied by energy produced by coal-fired powerfulness stations," said Hugues Ferreboeuf of The Shift Project.

"But that's not enough," helium warned. "At the aforesaid time, they indispensable negociate to power the maturation successful their consumption, different they volition seizure excessively overmuch of the energy produced by renewable energies."

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© 2021 AFP