Berkshire Hathaway's Green (Renewable) Energy efforts

WSJ has a post on Berkshire Hathaway’s renewable energy efforts.

In the neighboring Hawkeye State, the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. chairman has sunk billions into wind-farm projects, part of a big gambit on renewable energy by a utility company he acquired in 2000 and has built into one of the country’s largest power suppliers.

Through a majority-owned subsidiary, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Mr. Buffett plans to double the $15 billion already committed to renewable-energy projects through early this year, and he is on the hunt for more utility acquisitions.

Charles T. Munger , Mr. Buffett’s longtime business partner and Berkshire’s vice chairman, last month predicted that the company would be “the biggest utilities business in the United States” in a few years.

Seems like more and more green data center efforts are going to work with companies that are owned by Berkshire Hathaway.

California's Drought impacts Hydropower decreasing from 20% to 10% of energy mix

US Energy Information Agency released data on the effect of the California drought on energy production.

California drought leads to less hydropower, increased natural gas generation

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Drought Monitor; National Drought Mitigation Center

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The drought in California continues to increase in severity since California's governor declared a state of drought emergency in January 2014. As of September 30, 58% of the state was classified as experiencing exceptional drought, the most intense drought category. These dry conditions limit hydropower generation, requiring generation from other sources to make up for the shortfall.

Bad news is Hydropower has decreased due to the drought from 20% to 10%.

California's drought, which began in 2011, has resulted in a significant decline in hydropower generation. On average, hydropower accounted for 20% of California's in-state generation during the first six months of each year from 2004 to 2013. During the first half of 2014, however, hydropower accounted for only 10% of California's total generation. Monthly hydropower generation in 2014 has fallen well below the 10-year range for each individual month.

Good news is Wind and Solar grew to be bigger than hydropower.

California's drought, which began in 2011, has resulted in a significant decline in hydropower generation. On average, hydropower accounted for 20% of California's in-state generation during the first six months of each year from 2004 to 2013. During the first half of 2014, however, hydropower accounted for only 10% of California's total generation. Monthly hydropower generation in 2014 has fallen well below the 10-year range for each individual month.

In the below graph you can see the % of power coming from the various sources.

Facebook 14% Renewable, Google 35% - % renewable power in 2013

Facebook released its carbon disclosure here back in June 2014.

 Google released its carbon disclosure here back in the last month or two.

Facebook has 14% clean and renewable power.  Google has 35% with 24% coming from PPA, power purchase agreements.

Hydropower from the cooling tower, Honda did it, should a data center?

We’ve all stared at cooling towers.  How many of you thought hey let’s see if we can recover some of the energy from the falling water?  Think it’s not worth it?  Honda didn’t.

They were able to get 5.3 kW from the turbine.

What USA data center will be geothermal powered?

I’ve been to Iceland and seen geothermal in action powering a data center.  It is a dream to have geothermal in the USA for a data center given the lack of availability, but tracking is arriving to improve geothermal performance.

The economist posts on the state of geothermal in the USA.

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The zigzag route to success

DEPENDING on your point of view, hydraulic fracturing—or “fracking”—is either the future of clean, natural gas or an environmental apocalypse. Fracking liberates gas trapped underground by drilling sideways from vertical well-shafts into horizontal layers of shale rock. Millions of gallons of a cocktail of water, sand and chemicals are injected into the horizontal wells at high pressure, fracturing the shale, releasing the gas—and causing violent protests in Europe and parts of America.

It looks like the industry will have chances within a year or two.

The sticking-point, says Susan Petty, AltaRock’s founder, is commercialisation. Geothermal is a steady source of energy (unlike windpower), has very high capacity-utilisation rates, zero fuel costs and near-zero greenhouse-gas emissions. The trouble is that successful existing geothermal plants do not need EGS, and for many failed wells it is uneconomic to introduce it. So with the help of an as-yet unnamed partner, AltaRock plans to buy up existing fields that it thinks it could make profitable using its version of EGS. That way it will avoid the costs of new infrastructure while demonstrating its technology’s viability.

The energy department reckons that EGS techniques could be commercially viable as soon as next year, at which point more private investors and perhaps utilities might pile in. It is not alone in its optimism: Germany, France and Britain have state research programmes for EGS.