Missouri passes Bill creating Tax Exemptions for Data Centers

KY3 reports on Missouri passing a job creation bill that benefits data centers.

The bill also creates state and local sales and use tax exemptions for new and expanding data centers and permits donation lease agreements between municipalities and data center projects

The government document is here.

DATA CENTERS

The act authorizes state and local sales and use tax exemptions for new and expanding data centers and permits donation lease agreements between municipalities and data center projects.

This is good news for the Grass Fed Data Center folks in Missouri who are championing a biomass Green Data Center effort.

Biomass for power generation, show me the good shit for a Grass-Fed Data Center

My Missouri Data Center friends were in town and they showed me their latest biomass samples.  Here is some of the early biomass, low btu density.

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Here is some higher density grass with a higher btu content that is compressed.

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Here is a better btu sample.

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And, then they showed me the really good shit.  Which has a composition of waste products added that contributes to a btu density as good as coal.

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I've had a great time chatting with the Missouri folks and they are doing some innovative low carbon footprint energy generation projects.  We've identified the next stage of the project and who they will be contacting.

Some of the next contacts are the readers of this blog, and you are going to recognize when you see the really good shit (biomass) for a Grass-fed data center.

Electricity for a Data Center from Hamsters or Biomass, Missouri Senator Kit Bond votes for Biomass

I just got back from a long 5 days in Missouri, (Mi zoor ah).  Mi zoor ah is in general the pronunciation used by the Republicans in the state and Mi zoor ee is by the Democrats.  Senator Kit Bond is a highly recognized Republican in the state.

"Serving Missouri has been my life's work. I have walked the land, fished its rivers and been humbled by the honesty and hard work of our people. The highest honor is to receive and safeguard the public trust" - Kit Bond.

Christopher S. "Kit" Bond is a sixth generation Missourian, born in St. Louis in 1939. He grew up in Mexico, MO, where he still resides and tends to several groves of trees he planted by hand.

I was on a panel right after Senator Kit Bond's keynote presentation on renewable energy and data centers.  I met the Senator and discussed the idea of the "grass fed data center" fueled by Missouri Biomass.

Below is a video that gives you an idea of the Senator's vision. 

Senator Kit Bond discusses the potential of using Biomass to fuel data centers in Missouri which is getting traction with a lot of potential potential clients as the Senator mentions.

Soon there is going to be a biomass powered data center and with efforts like Senator Kit Bond the momentum continues to build.

One of the humorous parts was the Senator making the point the Internet is not powered by hamsters.  But if you had few billion of these little guys you might get close to a megawatt of power.

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MasterCard Campus with Main Data Center achieves LEED Gold for existing building

LEED is typically discussed for new data centers, but you can achieve LEED certification as well for existing structures.

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Here is the press release.

MasterCard Campus is First in Missouri to Earn Green Building Certification

MasterCard Technologies Facility achieves Gold certification in the LEED® for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance rating system.

St. Louis, October 19, 2010 - MasterCard Worldwide today announced that its main technology campus in O’Fallon, Missouri, has achieved Gold certification in the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (LEED®-EBOM) rating system. Established by the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute, LEED is the preeminent program for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings.

The Data Center is mentioned as part of the site.

The 550,000-square-foot MasterCard Technologies campus, which is the company’s largest facility and home to its main data center, is the first project in Missouri to earn LEED-EBOM Gold certification.

Out of 550,000 sq ft how much is data center space?  What I have been finding in the financial sector the  space reported for data centers is lumped in with office worker space.  How much work does the data center do?

In 2009, $2.5 trillion in gross dollar volume was generated on its products by consumers around the world. Powered by the MasterCard Worldwide Network — the fastest payment processing network in the world — MasterCard processes over 22 billion transactions each year, has the capacity to handle 140 million transactions per hour, with an average network response time of 140 milliseconds and with 99.99 percent reliability.

My initial guess is the data center space is less than 5 MW.  So, let's find the MasterCard O'Fallon facility.

The facility is listed.

St. Louis
OPERATIONS CENTER2200 MasterCard Blvd
O’Fallon, MO 63368+7263 U.S.A
Telephone: 636.722.6100

Google maps shows the site at 200 MasterCard Blvd.

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Bing Maps shows a nicer view to look at the data center.  Go to Bird's eye view and you see how much of the space is used for office space with all the cars.

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And you get a better view of the data center cooling system and generators.

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So what is a guess on power?  Asking an expert.

Looks like only 3 generators – probably not 3.0 MW since this has been around a little while – so I would guess 2.5 MW each.  N+1 with some reserve for HVAC – maybe 4.0 MW of critical load.  Maybe 3.0 MW

So, 3 - 4 MW of critical load capacity to run MasterCard's main data center.

NYSE is run on less than 2.5 MW.  MasterCard main data center is run on less than 4 MW.

How much smaller do you think Financial data centers could be if they were built on Hadoop and HBase?

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HP publishes idea Methane Powered Data Centers from Cow Manure, why do you think I keep going to Missouri?

NYTimes discusses HP's new paper to be published on how methane gas from cow manure can be used for data center power.

One Moos and One Hums, but They Could Help Power Google

Toby Talbot/Associated Press

Manure from 10,000 cows could provide the power for a small computing center at a bank.

By ASHLEE VANCE
Published: May 18, 2010

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Design for Farm Waste Data Center Ecosystem

America’s dairy farmers could soon find themselves in the computer business, with the manure from their cows possibly powering the vast data centers of companies like Google andMicrosoft. While not immediately intuitive, the idea plays on two trends: the building of computing centers in more rural locales, and dairy farmers’ efforts to deal with cattle waste by turning it into fuel.

With the right skills, a dairy farmer could rent out land and power to technology companies and recoup an investment in the waste-to-fuel systems within two years, Hewlett-Packard engineers say in a research paper to be made public on Wednesday.

This will help to get more people thinking about renewable energy sources from agriculture.  USDA is another source gov't agency to work with on these ideas.

We've been discussing these ideas for the Ewing Industrial Data Center site in Columbia, MO along these same lines.  University of Missouri our education partner knows a lot about agriculture.

Our Vision

We will be recognized as a customer and employee-caring College that discovers and enlightens through excellence in teaching, research, extension and outreach in agriculture and natural resources programs that are socially sensitive, environmentally responsible, economically viable and efficiently productive.

SJ Mercury News discusses the ideas as well.

Mueller said he's never seen a biogas-powered computer facility. But he added, "there are a lot of potential synergies. You just have to be willing to locate the data center where the fuel is. I don't think you want to ship the manure to Silicon Valley."

With today's high-speed networks, Patel says, it's possible to build computer centers near farms in rural areas. He also sees big potential for using biogas power in developing nations, where electricity is expensive and the existing grid can't support much tech infrastructure.

"This could be an opportunity for emerging economies," he said, "where the need for IT services will be greater and greater."

Also, think of Fuel Cells for using the methane gas. 

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