WoodPellets.com sells for $115,000

Alternative fossil fuels are a big business. This market trend no doubt influenced the sale of woodpellets.com yesterday, which sold at auction for $115,000 USD, or £70,676. Because of their burning efficiency, wood pellets have become a popular biomass fuel for green furnaces and other applications.

Another recent large sale is OnlineEducation.com. It sold on eBay to domainer Alex Alexander for £67,603 ($100,000 USD).

Personally, I think online education is a much more profitable niche than wood pellets and am surprised that OnlineEducation.com didn’t sell for more. With the economy facing tough times, more and more people are going back to school, with many of them doing so online.

Source | DN Journal

Photo | Flickr

Google releases data center efficiency video

Last April, Google hosted the Efficient Data Center Summit, where bigwigs from the largest IT companies showed up to share tips for reducing resource usage, learn from one another, and share hugs and kisses.

The attendees gained all sorts of useful insight on how to make their data centers greener while still keeping their processing power in line. For those not cool enough to be invited to the party, Google was nice enough to place a video of the event presentation on their website.

The tips offered are mainly for owners of large data centers, but even if you don’t own several hundred servers, the presentation is still interesting to watch. It’s nice to see a company do the right thing and work for the greater good rather than focus only on profit.

L.L. Bean builds green data center

L.L. Bean may be famous for its outdoor products, but now it’s also known for bringing the outdoors into computing. The New England clothing retailer recently finished work on an 18,000-square-foot facility that is a step up from the drab design of most server rooms.

Located in Freeport, Maine, the data center was purposely built in a wilderness area and provides occupants with plenty of natural views and light. As Rocko Graziano, the man in charge of L.L. Bean’s infrastructure put it, “You don’t mind being cooped up in a three-hour planning meeting; when your mind wanders you can look outside and see the clouds flow by.”

All wood used in construction was forested locally and the facility is one of only eight in the United States to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. Pictures are available here.

Normally a company will worry about cost first and the welfare of its employees second. There’s no denying that most data centers become boring places after the initial “wow” reaction to the hardware fades away, but in this case, it looks like L.L. Bean wants to keep its server technicians happy and go green.

Source | Greener Computing

Photo | Flickr

Wind Powered Data Center

A Texas-based company called Baryonyx will soon create a wind-powered data center. They were awarded three energy leases for a total of 46,000 acres. It seems many companies are more willing to consider renewable energy sources and green technology as it becomes more practical and affordable. Those who have struggled to convince them of that should rejoice at this news.

Although Baryonyx will primarily rely on wind energy, they also intend to use hydrogen fuel cells and solar power whenever wind energy is low or unavailable. The data center will be 28,000 square feet and will be powered by 100 wind turbines, which will generate 3.3 megawats of power to power their servers. Part of their lease money will go to help support Texas schools, an added bonus for Texas residents.

“With these leases, we’re turning green power into green cash for the state’s Permanent School Fund,” said Jerry Patterson, Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office. “It’s not just sustainable energy to power our businesses, it’s sustainable funding for public education.”

Baryonyx’ management team features energy industry veterans, most of whom hail from the UK.

Source: Data Center Knowledge
Photo: Flickr