May 20, 2010 - Poop Considered to Power Google Data Centers

Google, along with Hewlett Packard and Microsoft, have been seriously considering everything from wave, wind, and solar power to keep their increasingly massive data centers running.

One alternative idea that was recently released in a research paper by HP outlines how companies like themselves, Google and Microsoft could partner with American dairy farmers and use cattle dung as fuel - using an already existent by-product? There's an idea that (drum-roll please...) doesn't stink!

There are many dairy farmers that already want to build biogas plants where they can turn manure into useful methane but efforts to do so are impeded by the high initial cost of equipment. However, the research by HP discusses a system where farmers could rent out both land and power to tech companies with a reasonable return on investment in waste-to-fuel systems within only two years. To us at Green Guide Network this is only seen as a win/win for both the farmers and the tech companies considering tech companies have the money that farmers need to finance their equipment and are willing to spend it in order to get clean, cheap power.

Questions have risen surrounding how much power can actually be produced by one cow's waste, and we were curious as well so we dug up the dirt on poop: An average cow creates enough crap in one day to power a 100-watt light bulb, which means 10,000 cows could potentially power a small, 1-MW data center. Regardless, the research points to a viable, cheap, and clean source of power - which is in no way (this is too easy...) a crappy idea.