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AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
Thank you to people who responded to my post,

I check the apple job site, and they said there isn't anything offered yet.

I'm just hoping now, that it's still under construction and the jobs haven't been posted yet.

Are you aware that almost none of the computers in that datacenter will be running OSX, and almost none will have the fruit logo?

There may be a few Apple clients to interface with the Java/HTML web interfaces for the server iron - but nothing more.

And those web interfaces can be run from California or anywhere - no need to have wetware in Nevada.

I have a small datacenter lab with about 400 servers - fibre channel, Infiniband, GbE & 10 GbE and 40 GbE. vSphere. Hyper-V. I've managed the lab from Brussels, Athens, Chapel Hill, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Orlando, Nassau, Eastsound, Honolulu, Papeete, Morea, Bora Bora, Sorong, Cozumel, Cancun, Belize, Manila, Dumaguete, Bangkok, Phuket, Chuuk, Port Douglas, Sydney, Brisbane, Bali, Siem Reap, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and lots of other places.

If I have an internet connection, I can do almost everything that I can do from Mountain View. If a DVD needs to be inserted or a dead disk swapped - I have hourly staff to do that.

The high-paying jobs for the Reno data center won't be in Nevada, they'll be in Cupertino.
 
Last edited:

macs4nw

macrumors 601
I'm sorry that you were offended by what I meant as a tongue-in-cheek clarification. My apologies.

And the parentheses around the "large" comment were meant to separate it from your comment - it was just an explanation of LHC, not a rebuttal to you.

And you totally missed the joke about Alice. I'm sure that the people at CERN that I worked with on the LHC got it.

No offence taken :cool:
If you feel like explaining the 'Alice' joke, I'd like to hear that, or is that an inside joke? Are you sure, people working at CERN, have time, or an interest, to read up on MacRumors?
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
No offence taken :cool:
If you feel like explaining the 'Alice' joke, I'd like to hear that, or is that an inside joke? Are you sure, people working at CERN, have time, or an interest, to read up on MacRumors?

"Alice" is one of the experiments at CERN on the LHC that will be doing collisions with lead (Pb) nuclei.

Lead nuclei are definitely very, very large Hadrons.

http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html

And there are Apple fans everywhere, I'm sure that some from Building 513 follow these forums.
 

tomguy99

macrumors newbie
Jul 2, 2013
3
0
Are you aware that almost none of the computers in that datacenter will be running OSX, and almost none will have the fruit logo?

There may be a few Apple clients to interface with the Java/HTML web interfaces for the server iron - but nothing more.

And those web interfaces can be run from California or anywhere - no need to have wetware in Nevada.

I have a small datacenter lab with about 400 servers - fibre channel, Infiniband, GbE & 10 GbE and 40 GbE. vSphere. Hyper-V. I've managed the lab from Brussels, Athens, Chapel Hill, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Orlando, Nassau, Eastsound, Honolulu, Papeete, Morea, Bora Bora, Sorong, Cozumel, Cancun, Belize, Manila, Dumaguete, Bangkok, Phuket, Chuuk, Port Douglas, Sydney, Brisbane, Bali, Siem Reap, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and lots of other places.

If I have an internet connection, I can do almost everything that I can do from Mountain View. If a DVD needs to be inserted or a dead disk swapped - I have hourly staff to do that.

The high-paying jobs for the Reno data center won't be in Nevada, they'll be in Cupertino.

I'm not looking to work for Apple for the sake of being around dumb apple equipment, I"m not a apple fanboy.

If you live Reno (which you don't)
then you would know that people claw at minimum wage jobs,
The city's only "real" source of income is the taxes on casinos.

I may be wrong, but I thought Apple offered good pay at the entry level.
even if hourly.

If I'm wrong however, then I guess the local Reno news was right.


Not everyone here in Reno is excited about this,
some people think Apple is just here for lower taxes
there is already an Apple office here that's just empty room with a phone, so Apple can claim taxes here.

I think that's called tax fraud,

I won't be surprised since Apple already does it.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57587335-37/apple-owes-france-$6.5-million-in-unpaid-taxes/
 

iGrip

macrumors 68000
Jul 1, 2010
1,626
0
Use the solar power to pump water into a high reservoir, then generate hydro power at night.


That would work great if you have unlimited amounts of money.

Consider that you will need to build enough solar to handle all of your needs.

Then you will need to more than double the amount of solar power, in order to both meet your needs and power the water pumps.

Then you will need to build a completely separate hydro plant big enough to meet all your needs.

So yeah - much more than triple the capital investment would cover it, if you ignore the huge price of building a reservoir on top of a mountain and the cost of the transmission lines from the mountain to your data center.

It would work great if you didn't much care how much it might cost.


PS - pumped storage works economically only where there is excess capacity which you use at night, when electricity is cheap. Then it is effective as a financial arbitrage; you end up with LOTS less electricity than you started with. It is NOT economically effective to use high priced electricity to pump during the day, only to burn the electricity at night when it would be cheap to just buy it. And it is NOT a good way to "conserve" electricity because MUCH more is used than what is recovered.
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
That would work great if you have unlimited amounts of money.

That's why I commented that selling the excess solar is probably a better idea for Apple.

note:

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/29/solar-power-can-double-pumped-hydro-output-nice/

In Germany, due to cheap afternoon solar power, pumped hydro operators have been running on two cycles a day, not just the normal one at night. Essentially, this means that you’re doubling the potential of existing pumped hydro infrastructure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

Pumped storage is the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available, and, as of March 2012, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) reports that PSH accounts for more than 99% of bulk storage capacity worldwide, representing around 127,000 MW.[1] PSH reported energy efficiency varies in practice between 70% and 80%, with some claiming up to 87%.

Pumped hydro is real, and can be cost effective.
 

iGrip

macrumors 68000
Jul 1, 2010
1,626
0
That's why I commented that selling the excess solar is probably a better idea for Apple.

note:





Pumped hydro is real, and can be cost effective.


The first link is interesting, I didn't know that they got extra cycles from existing projects using surplus solar.

The second link is well known stuff. Pumped storage is commonly used for financial
arbitrage by buying cheap power at night and making a smaller amount of expensive power during the day.
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
The first link is interesting, I didn't know that they got extra cycles from existing projects using surplus solar.

The second link is well known stuff. Pumped storage is commonly used for financial arbitrage by buying cheap power at night and making a smaller amount of expensive power during the day.

Thanks, we basically agree. Pumped hydro has a huge capital investment, but can be cost effective in a fair number of cases (but mostly utility-scale cases, not for a small server farm in Reno).
 

Kattym

macrumors member
Mar 13, 2013
41
0
Apple to use solar energy? So, should we wait for iPhone with solar batteries? )))))))))))
 

aph3x

macrumors member
Jun 28, 2007
57
0
Reno, NV
Please don't take offense to this post.

- This datacenter will require very few actual workers. The big deal wasn't about the jobs this will create, it was about Apple being in the area.
- Your best option to work for Apple would be at the store at the Summit. Even then the pay isn't great.
- There are plenty of jobs in Reno. I'm assuming you have neither experience, nor education or expertise? It's going to be hard getting a good job anywhere without any of that.
- Consider construction. Housing starts in Reno are taking off like crazy because of low inventory and there aren't enough workers.

Good luck. This post isn't meant to put you down but you aren't in reality right now either.

I'm not looking to work for Apple for the sake of being around dumb apple equipment, I"m not a apple fanboy.

If you live Reno (which you don't)
then you would know that people claw at minimum wage jobs,
The city's only "real" source of income is the taxes on casinos.

I may be wrong, but I thought Apple offered good pay at the entry level.
even if hourly.

If I'm wrong however, then I guess the local Reno news was right.


Not everyone here in Reno is excited about this,
some people think Apple is just here for lower taxes
there is already an Apple office here that's just empty room with a phone, so Apple can claim taxes here.

I think that's called tax fraud,

I won't be surprised since Apple already does it.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57587335-37/apple-owes-france-$6.5-million-in-unpaid-taxes/
 

sentiblue

macrumors 6502
Aug 2, 2012
258
211
Silicon Valley
Over what timeframe? A day? A year? The lifespan of the facility?

The answer is right there in your question...

the 137 acre solar array will generate approximately 43.5 million kilowatt hours of clean energy.

The kilowatt-hour (symbolized kWh) is a unit of energy equivalent to one kilowatt (1 kW) of power expended for one hour (1 h) of time.

So I guess that means 43.5 Terawatts produced per hour.
 

nsayer

macrumors 65816
Jan 23, 2003
1,249
775
Silicon Valley
The answer is right there in your question...

the 137 acre solar array will generate approximately 43.5 million kilowatt hours of clean energy.

The kilowatt-hour (symbolized kWh) is a unit of energy equivalent to one kilowatt (1 kW) of power expended for one hour (1 h) of time.

So I guess that means 43.5 Terawatts produced per hour.

You have greatly misunderstood the difference between power and energy.

I have solar panels on my house. During the 2012 calendar year, they produced around 11 megawatt-hours. So that's 11 MW-hr produced in a year.

The question still stands: Over what timeframe are they expecting to generate the 4,350,000 kW-hr they're talking about?
 

Liquorpuki

macrumors 68020
Jun 18, 2009
2,286
8
City of Angels
You have greatly misunderstood the difference between power and energy.

I have solar panels on my house. During the 2012 calendar year, they produced around 11 megawatt-hours. So that's 11 MW-hr produced in a year.

The question still stands: Over what timeframe are they expecting to generate the 4,350,000 kW-hr they're talking about?

It's over a year

20 MW generation capacity * 24 Hours * 365 Days = 175200 MWH theoretical max if the the panels outputted their peak 24/7

But since the sun goes down, you only get 43500 MWH

43500 / 175200 = 0.25 = a 25% capacity factor, which is in the ballpark for a solar installation in NV
 

sentiblue

macrumors 6502
Aug 2, 2012
258
211
Silicon Valley
You have greatly misunderstood the difference between power and energy.

I have solar panels on my house. During the 2012 calendar year, they produced around 11 megawatt-hours. So that's 11 MW-hr produced in a year.

The question still stands: Over what timeframe are they expecting to generate the 4,350,000 kW-hr they're talking about?

I stand corrected... Thanks!
 
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