by Anthony Watts
WUWT readers of course have heard about the Met Office and their giant new supercomputer called “deep black” that they use for climate simulation and short term forecasts.
Not to be outdone, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO has commissioned a new supercomputer project of their own: The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) shown in artist rendering below.
In the initial press release they state the location and purpose:
January 23, 2007
BOULDER—The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and its managing organization, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), announced today that they will form a partnership with the University of Wyoming, the State of Wyoming, and the University of Colorado at Boulder to build a new supercomputing data center for scientific research in Cheyenne. The center will house some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers in order to advance understanding of climate, weather, and other Earth and atmospheric processes.
…
The center’s supercomputers, which will be upgraded regularly, will initially achieve speeds of hundreds of teraflops (trillion floating-point operations per second).
The Met Office wrote in their initial press release:
By 2011, the total system is anticipated to have a total peak performance approaching 1 PetaFlop — equivalent to over 100,000 PCs and over 30 times more powerful than what is in place today.
We found out later that the Met Office supercomputer would have an electrical power consumption of 1.2 megawatts.
So with that it mind, we’d expect the new NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) to have some similar sort of power consumption. Right?
On the masthead of the NWSC page they say they are all about energy efficiency.
The NWSC project encompasses the design and construction of a world class center for high performance scientific computing in the atmospheric and related geosciences. Consistent with its mission, the facility will be a leader in energy efficiency, incorporating the newest and most efficient designs and technologies available. The center will provide new space to enable the advancement of scientific knowledge, education, and service through high-performance computing.
And on the right sidebar:
Focus on Sustainability
Maximum energy efficiency, LEED certification, and achievement of the smallest possible carbon footprint are all goals of the NWSC project. In the coming weeks and months, check this section of the site for updates on project sustainability efforts and outcomes.
That’s great, I’m all for sustainability and energy efficiency, even the “smallest possible carbon footprint” doesn’t sound too bad. Surely it will be more energy efficient and “greener” than the Met Office Supercomputer, right?
There’s an interesting unanswered question though. Why put this new facility in Wyoming rather than “green” Colorado? Isn’t Boulder, where NCAR is headquartered, the greenest of Colorado cities, and in the US top five too?
In the initial press release announcing the project, there’s this bit of political feel good prose:
“Having an NCAR supercomputing facility in Wyoming will be transformative for the University of Wyoming, will represent a significant step forward in the state’s economic development, and will provide exceptional opportunities for NCAR to make positive contributions to the educational infrastructure of an entire state,” says William Gern, the university’s vice president for research and economic development.
Gosh, what an opportunity for Wyoming. But why give the opportunity away? Colorado doesn’t want this opportunity? None of the politicians in Colorado want to be able to say to their constituents that they brought “economic development” and “positive contributions to the educational infrastructure of an entire state”? That doesn’t seem right.
The answer may very well lie in economics, but not the kind they mention in feel good press releases.
You see as we know from supercomputers, they need a lot of energy to operate. And because they operate in enclosed spaces, a lot of energy to keep them cooled so they don’t burn up from the waste heat they generate.
For all their sophistication, without power for operation and cooling, a supercomputer is just dead weight and space.
Electricity is king.
Interestingly, in the press releases and web pages, NCAR provides no answers (at least none that were easy to find) to how much electricity the new supercomputer might use for operation and cooling. They also provide no explanation as to why Colorado let this opportunity go to another state. I had to dig into NCAR’s interoffice staff notes to find the answer.
The answer is: electricity.
Measuring 108,000 square feet in total with 15,000-20,000 square feet of raised floor, it will be built for 8 megawatts of power, with 4-5 megawatts for computing and 3-4 for cooling.
8 megawatts! Yowza.
It’s really about economics. Electricity is getting expensive, and likely to be more expensive in the future. Candidate Obama said that under his leadership, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket“. Clearly NCAR is planning for a more expensive energy future.
In the interoffice staff notes, NCAR outlines its decision logic.
NCAR considered partnerships for the data center with a number of organizations along the Front Range, giving CU-Boulder and the University of Wyoming particularly close scrutiny. NCAR also looked into leasing space and retrofitting an existing data center.
With support from NSF and the UCAR Board of Trustees, NCAR chose to locate the center in Wyoming after a rigorous evaluation, concluding that this partnership would facilitate getting the greatest computing capability for the regional and national scientific community at the earliest possible time.
“The Wyoming offer provides more computing power, sooner, and at lower cost,” Tim explained during an all-staff town hall meeting on January 31. “We’ve secured the future of NCAR’s role in leadership computing.”
The Wyoming offer consists of a 24-acre “shovel-ready” site for construction in the North Range Business Park in Cheyenne near the intersection of I-80 and I-25, along with physical infra- structure for fiber optics and guaranteed power transmission of 24 megawatts. The University of Wyoming will provide $20 million in endowment funds for construction, as well as $1 million annually for operations. NCAR will utilize the State of Wyoming’s bond program to fund construction, with the state treasurer purchasing bonds that will be paid off by NCAR.
Although CU-Boulder’s offer would have given the new center greater proximity to other NCAR facilities, it would have left NCAR with a mortgage of $50 million rather than $40 million and less long-term financial savings. The Cheyenne site offers cheaper construction costs and lends itself to future expansion. It also brings a transformative partnership to a state that has traditionally lacked opportunities in technology and research.
Indeed according to the latest figures from the Energy Information Adminsitration and Department of Energy (EIA/DOE) electricity is significantly cheaper in Wyoming.
So besides the fact that NCAR abandoned “green” Colorado for it’s cheaper electricity rates and bond program, what’s the “dirty little secret?
Coal, the “dirtiest of fuels”, some say.
According to Sourcewatch, Wyoming is quite something when it comes to coal. Emphasis mine.
Wyoming is the nation’s highest coal producer, with over 400 million tons of coal produced in the state each year. In 2006, Wyoming’s coal production accounted for almost 40% of the nation’s coal.[1] Currently Wyoming coal comes from four of the State’s ten major coal fields. The Powder River Coal Field has the largest production in the world – in 2007, it produced over 436 million short tons.[2]
Wyoming coal is shipped to 35 other states. The coal is highly desirable because of its low sulfur levels.[3] On average Wyoming coal contains 0.35 percent sulfur by weight, compared with 1.59 percent for Kentucky coal and 3 to 5 percent for other eastern coals. Although Wyoming coal may have less sulfur, it also a lower “heat rate” or fewer Btu’s of energy. On average Wyoming coal has 8600 Btu’s of energy per pound, while Eastern coal has heat rates of over 12,000 Btu’s per pound, meaning that plants have to burn 50 percent more Wyoming coal to equal the power output from Eastern coal.[4]
Coal-fired power plants produce almost 95% of the electricity generated in Wyoming. Wyoming’s average retail price of electricity is 5.27 cents per kilowatt hour, the 2nd lowest rate in the nation[5]
It’s so bad, that Wyoming’s coal plants earned the coveted “Coal Swarm” badge on that page.
Gosh.
But not to worry, NCAR has a plan to “clean up” that dirty coal use to power their supercomputer climate modeling system.
Again from the interoffice staff notes
The new center will be the first NCAR facility to earn LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for its design, construction, and operation. Measuring 108,000 square feet in total with 15,000-20,000 square feet of raised floor, it will be built for 8 megawatts of power, with 4-5 megawatts for computing and 3-4 for cooling. The power will be generated primarily from “clean” coal (coal that has been chemically scrubbed to reduce emissions of harmful pollutants) via Cheyenne Light Fuel and Power. NCAR is also aggressively working to secure the provision of alternative energy (wind and solar) for the facility, hoping to attain an initial level of 10%.
“We’re going to push for environmentally friendly solutions,” Tim says.
Clean Coal? Hmmm. NASA GISS’ Dr. Jim Hansen says Clean Coal is a decade away:
James Hansen, one of the world’s best-known global warming researchers and a recent vocal advocate of proposed coal plants, says clean coal technology used on a full-scale coal-fired plant could be at least a decade away. He expressed the sentiment in a media briefing organized by clean energy group RE-AMP, arguing against a proposed coal plant in Marshalltown, Iowa.
Hansen also said that:
“The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. When I testified against the proposed Kingsnorth power plant, I estimated that in its lifetime it would be responsible for the extermination of about 400 species – its proportionate contribution to the number that would be committed to extinction if carbon dioxide rose another 100 ppm.”
Don’t worry, the University of Wyoming in Cheyenne, where the new NCAR supercomputing center will be, is already on top of the situation. This is from their press release May 26th, 2008:
The University of Wyoming is ready to research clean coal and wants proposals from both academic and industry organizations. With the help of the Wyoming state government, they’ve arranged for up to $4.5 million in research funds — which can be matched by non-state funds.
And, Wyoming already has their hand out to Presdient Obama:
Colorado, Utah, Wyoming Seek Clean Coal Funding
DENVER (AP) ―
The governors of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are asking President Barack Obama to fund the development of clean-coal technologies in the West.
Yup, clean coal will power that new NCAR supercomputer any day now, and we’ll be paying for it.
In the meantime:
I’m sure NCAR will let us know how those wind turbines work out for that other 10% of the power.
h/t to Steve Goddard in comments
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A facility such as this would buy electical power under ‘Industrial’ rates.
I recommend highlighting the Industrial rates for Colrado and Wyoming.
I need to say that again.
82 plus arces of solar panals….
the entire output of the largest state-of-the-art solar power station in the US… 8 megawatts…
to run a climate modeling program,
which any programmer knows is, Garbage in Garbage out…
to “prove” global warming.
r (19:02:53) :
We should congratulate them for solving Global Warming for 82 acres.
Eventually, they will be able to replace Carbon-based life with Silicon-based artificial intelligence.
The first easy thing to audit in climate models coming out of NCAR is if they factor in the heat island spot above their supercomputer and the facilities that burn the coal.
rbateman is priceless.
@John
“Myths about Coal up in Smoke”, by Terence Cardwell
http://thesixtyzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/cardwell-letter.pdf
Quote: “First, coal-fired power stations do NOT send 60 to 70% of the energy up the chimney. The boilers of modern power stations are 96% efficient and the exhaust heat is captured by the economisers and reheaters and heat the air and water before entering the boilers.”
[and]
“They can generate power at efficiency of less than 10000b.t.u. per kilowatt and cost-wise that is very low.”
I’m having difficulty reconciling these two apparently conflicting statements.
The second statement obviously contains an error in units since a btu cannot be converted to kilowatts. The correct units are:
1 btu/hr = 2.93297 EE-04 kW
or
1 btu = 2.93297 EE-04 kWH
At 100% efficiency, 10,000 btu converts to 2.93297 kWH.
The figure stated in the latter statement of the article calculates at [greater than] 34.1% efficiency, or a loss of [less than] 65.9%., a far cry from the 96% efficiency claimed in the former statement.
Where is the [less than] 1.93297 kWH per 10,000 btu going, if not up the chimney as heat? My guess is the printing of a typographical error in the 2nd statement, but due to my not being familiar with the design of these plants, am unsure of the correct explanation for the discrepancy.
@Ron de Haan (17:48:27) :
“How is the energy for the Whitehouse and the Hill generated?”
Hot air turbines powered from the mouths of politicans.
More CO2 = tipping point = runaway temps.
So, next to this supradupra puter, they build a huge bio-dome, fill it up with water vapour, toss in some co2 and watch the temp go up. Use the rising temp to power generator. Cheap electricity.
They believe in tipping points, maybe they’ll believe the above.
Besides the hot air generated by politicians, part of the energy comes from the massive page count of bills incinerated, plus the Coal-fired plant (that Hansen stood out in front of in a blizzard last year urging protesters to mob the place).
Anyone compare the cost/flop of this center to that provided by Amazon?
My guess is that Amazon can do it for one-tenth the cost.
Just saying.
Yes Toyotawhizguy I am bemused too. 19.29.53.
For high pressure steam production I doubt you could reach 95% boiler efficiency with oil firing let alone coal.
Based on British figures roughly overall efficiency in terms of electricity output for thermal input using steam turbines and coal steadily rose from about 25% in the 1930’s to around 33% by the 1970s and perhaps 35% today. In part this steady improvement came from better design, notably of turbine blade profiles, and larger scale: so alternator sizes increased from the 50MW set of the 1920’s to the 500 Mw sets of the 1970’s.
By the 1970’s the then UK Central Electricity Generating Board [CEGB]reckoned its overall efficiency in coal fired stations at 33% but this included older stations and was averaged over winter to summer, the then chief engineer at the new station, Drax, told me he reckoned on between 33% in the summer and 37% in the winter due to ambient temperature change, and thus cooling tower effectiveness, and his was a massive base load station. Still is.
In theory the Leroy mercury topper cycle could also achieve this in much smaller stations but it never became a significant commercial design.
The CEGB, partly because it had a brief to build big and remote coal fired stations, and partly because it did not like sacrificing electric output to provide district heating effectually stymied such projects in the 1970’s and 80’s.
But the Germans amongst others have had considerable success with this in recent years using small local coal fired stations for combined heat and power. It seems these manage an overall efficiency of around 60% more or less, half as electricity and half district heating.
If of course you have cheap and abundant natural gas you can employ dual gas/steam cycle plant which has enormous advantages. Compared to coal or even oil it can respond far more quickly to load changes reducing spinning reserve, it is quick and cheap to build with capital costs and build times perhaps a half to a third that of coal plant and although the gas turbines are not ideal, being based on aerospace designs, actual maintenance cost is cheaper too. Best of all you get efficiencies close to 50% and with no need or use for a ULP steam turbine stage can do district heating too.
For the USA which has due to modern gas extraction techniques has huge reserves this is the logical way to go: which does not mean it will happen.
For Australia which has enormous coal reserves then coal is the way to go.
What the UK will do heaven only knows but given our politicians I suspect they may be a bit baffled up there too.
Kindest Regards
The Anthropogenicus Circus Warmicus will never end – as long as the Fed. Mints continue to be powered up.
If the U.K. Met Office has ”deep black”, why then of course NCAR has to try and go one (or 2 or 3) better over on this side of the pond. After all, it’s only taxpayer dollars. . . .
FOOTNOTE: Good post by a jones @ur momisugly 20:52:35 on efficiencies of various technologies. And right about USA having massive recoverable gas reserves; but also correct about political will to allow access lacking or at best weak, among the politicians currently in power. And don’t forget Generation-III+ and Generation-IV high-efficiency nuclear plants; which if the powers to be had any sense we would be building right now.
I half wonder if this project will actually get built because it involves sweeteners in the form of state money and its beginning to look like circular financing. Anyway, if one is going to build this device, despite all indications that more computing power will not bring a jot of wisdom to one side of this debate, there are a couple of advantages to putting it in Cheyenne besides power rates, power reliability, and reasonable environmental temperatures.
First, there is already enough wind energy just on the outskirts of Cheyenne to run the darned thing, except when it is really cold, or in summer, when the wind hardly blows. We’d make as much as 250,000MW here by wind, precisely at the times when no one needs it, except there is no transmission capacity to handle what we have now–and the 100,000 windmills needed would convince the most sparkle-headed watermelon of the menace of sustainable energy. Second, 8MW is nothing as you all know. We have a 4500 MW plant west of here that burns coal, of course, and sends the power to the greenies in California. Third, there is all the communications bandwidth in the world running east-west and north-south through Cheyenne. If you surf the internet or watch TV its a sure bet the data passed through this town.
The best part of the project, if it ever comes to pass, is that the research staff will stay in Boulder.
In theory, only two. But how did the Petaflops get INTO the light bulb?
Lady in Red (16:13:36) :
Many years ago, Walter Orr Roberts gave me a tour of NCAR. I did not comprehend: the Crays.
Even more years ago, Walter and I [and colleagues] were studying possible Sun-Weather connections [e.g. Science. 1973 Apr 13; 180(4082):185-186. Solar Magnetic Sector Structure: Relation to Circulation of the Earth’s Atmosphere. Wilcox JM, Scherrer PH, Svalgaard L, Roberts WO, Olson RH.
“The solar magnetic sector structure appears to be related to the average area of high positive vorticity centers (low-pressure troughs) observed during winter in the Northern Hemisphere at the 300-millibar level. The average area of high vorticity decreases (low-pressure troughs become less intense) during a few days near the times at which sector boundaries are carried past the earth by the solar wind. The amplitude of the effect is about 10 percent.” – later on it seemed the effect went away…].
We used the NCAR CDC7600 [the supercomputer of its day; designed by Seymour Cray before he started his own company] running all night to process all archived weather data up until then. Walter was very aware of the role computers could play [if used for something meaningful].
“a jones (20:52:35) :
For Australia which has enormous coal reserves then coal is the way to go. ”
There’s a shedload of gas here too however, it’s practically being given away to China.
Methow Ken (21:19:50) :
If the U.K. Met Office has ”deep black”, why then of course NCAR has to try and go one (or 2 or 3)
They can call it Deep InfraRed…
NCAR’s dirty little secret
I thought we (in the USA) were getting a change to transparency in government?
Groan!
Excuse me for being stupid but … isn’t the weather and therefore the climate system mathematically chaotic? Isn’t the main premise of chatotic behaviour that it is unpredictable ? isn’t it mathematically proven that you cannot predict chaotic system’s behaviour and therefore isn’t it futile to build bigger computers to try to predict it’s behaviour?
Part of Wyoming’s offer to NCAR was that the site on which the supercomputer is to be built would have “guaranteed power transmission of 24 megawatts”. That suggests NCAR expects that it’s machine or its successor machines will draw considerably more juice that the 8 megawatts that are initially required.
To put the present and future power requirements in perspective, the total electric power draw for the entire City of Boulder currently comes to about 100 megawatts.
The probable reason why electric power is cheaper in Wyoming than Colorado is that Colorado utilities use a substantial amount of natural gas to generate electricity, whereas Wyoming utilities use almost none. According to figures from the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, in 2007, Wyoming generated 43.1 million megawatt hours of electricity with coal and 594,000 megawatt hours with natural gas. Colorado generated 35.9 million megawatt hours with coal and 15 million megawatt hours with natural gas. Both states get small amounts of electricity from wind. In 2007, Colorado actually got more electricity from wind than Wyoming did (1.29 million megawatt hours for Colorado vs 754, 000 for Wyoming), but this may have changed by now.
Wyoming coal from the Powder River Basin costs $8.40 a ton, the cheapest in the US. No one else comes close. A ton of Powder River Basin coal contains about 17.6 million BTUs of energy. To get a similar amount of energy from natural gas, you would have to buy about 17,000 cubic feet of the stuff. The price of natural gas got down to $3 per 1,000 cubic feet earlier this year but it is currently around twice that. Either way, the difference in cost is pretty striking.
Personally, I don’t much care where NCAR chooses to locate its computing center, but I do think that its decision to power it with electricity from cheap Power River Basin coal makes a mockery of the public policy prescriptions its scientists have been making. If the folks warning of impending catastrophe aren’t prepared to change their life style to avert it, why should anyone take them seriously?
8MW does not mean much to the public.
What is the average total energy consumption of the average American family? i.e. How many average US families can be powered using 8MW?
@ur momisugly Michael (15:51:59) :
“All The Climategates Men”
yeah, from Warmer Brothers…
Jim Cole (13:37:28) :
Jim,
A couple of years ago, my wife and I attended a concert at the Colorado Symphony. It featured a visiting conductor.
He said Boulder was a very interesting city. Sort of a Berkley on thin air. That got a lot of laughs.
A few years ago I worked at IBM in Niwot. Always enjoyed going through Boulder on the way to work. Still enjoy driving through there on the way to Estes Park.
But, I don’t think I would fit in very well if I lived there.
One comedian said he was pulled over by the Boulder police because he was eating a sandwich containing meat. The cop said they were going to bust him, just as soon as they solved the JonBenét Patricia Ramsey case. He figures he’s got about ten years before they come after him.
You were right about the very cold December we had here. I really would like to see Boulder get rid of their power plant and get by on alternatives.
Jack “Cutthroat Native”