I mean, Mississippi probably is a good place to put things if you’re looking for low labor costs and need to be in the US anyway, even without negotiating a tax break.
I’m not sure that it’s the best place to put datacenters, though, which is what this appears to be. Mississippi’s got a warm climate, and datacenters tend to need to spend on cooling.
How much does it cost to cool a data center? A cooling system is one of the most expensive parts of any data center. According to research, anywhere between 30% to 55% of a data center’s energy consumption goes into powering its cooling and ventilation systems — with the average hovering around 40%.
I didn’t find rankings per state on the cost per KwH in the time I spent looking, but Mississippi rates are about one/third what we pay in Massachusetts
Mississippi is the very definition of geologically stable. Weather events are rare enough. Tornados aren’t much of a thing. Katrina levelled Gulfport like a nuclear bomb but go as far as Hattiesburg and there were only a few shingles blown off.
That’s a thought on the cooling. I don’t know how much water-cooling datacenters is a thing, but I remember Google spending a while considering floating datacenters for that reason.
It looks like Madison County, where they’re building it, isn’t on the Mississippi, though.
It does apparently have some smaller rivers, and maybe they could use those if they’re doing water cooling.
I don’t think that hydropower is a factor either. Apparently they’re looking at it, but not on the Mississippi River, and are in fact the only state in the US to have no hydropower generation (at least as of 2021):
In terms of hydropower, according to this document from the Mississippi state government, as of 2021, Mississippi is the only US state to do zero hydropower generation.
While there are conventional
hydropower/hydroelectric
facilities that are in nearly every
state, one state sticks out as
having zero generation from
hydroelectric resources –
Mississippi.
I mean, Mississippi probably is a good place to put things if you’re looking for low labor costs and need to be in the US anyway, even without negotiating a tax break.
I’m not sure that it’s the best place to put datacenters, though, which is what this appears to be. Mississippi’s got a warm climate, and datacenters tend to need to spend on cooling.
googles
https://dataspan.com/blog/data-center-cooling-costs/
Surprisingly, fifth per capita in renewable energy
I didn’t find rankings per state on the cost per KwH in the time I spent looking, but Mississippi rates are about one/third what we pay in Massachusetts
So, yeah, good deal for Amazon.
Not to mention all that sweet electricity y’all buy from us Canadians, or is that just NY?
Mississippi is the very definition of geologically stable. Weather events are rare enough. Tornados aren’t much of a thing. Katrina levelled Gulfport like a nuclear bomb but go as far as Hattiesburg and there were only a few shingles blown off.
As for cooling, water is plentiful.
Apparently they are also loud af and stress people and animals in a pretty big radius of the data center.
You get the Mississippi River though, which can help with both cooling and clean power.
That’s a thought on the cooling. I don’t know how much water-cooling datacenters is a thing, but I remember Google spending a while considering floating datacenters for that reason.
It looks like Madison County, where they’re building it, isn’t on the Mississippi, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_County,_Mississippi
It does apparently have some smaller rivers, and maybe they could use those if they’re doing water cooling.
I don’t think that hydropower is a factor either. Apparently they’re looking at it, but not on the Mississippi River, and are in fact the only state in the US to have no hydropower generation (at least as of 2021):
https://www.psc.ms.gov/sites/default/files/2021-08/FromtheDeskOfBB_HydropowerMissedOpportunityinMS.pdf
If Los Lunas, NM can host a data center, anywhere in Mississippi can.
Don’t forget hurricanes.
That’s interesting. I wonder if there’s more data centers in colder areas that take advantage of the local weather to cool.