Our servers are now fully solar powered

Since yesterday morning the servers that run f-hub.org and related services are directly fed from a newly installed solar-panel array on the roof of the building. While it is not an island solution, we expect the solar production and battery capacity to be sufficient to cover 100% of the power needs of our small data-center. But don’t worry, should there be a longer bad weather period, it automatically switches back to grid power, which at least during off-peak periods is mostly wind and geothermal energy here on this beautiful island.

But my VPS host is also 100% renewable powered?

Your typical VPS host might claim to be certified to run on 100% renewable energy, but usually this just means that they are on a renewable energy power-tariff from their local utility company. While this does help to show demand and will make the utility company consider investing more into renewable energy, it doesn’t actually mean that less fossile fuel is burned. All this means is that the non-renewable energy in the grid can be more cheaply sold to customers that care less about the source of the power.

On-premise hosting and co-location services

If you really care about the environmental impact of your computing needs, the best solution is to host everything on-premise or co-locate the servers in a small nearby data-center that also values their environmental impact highly. Only then it is possible to fully ensure the electicity is locally produced and surplus heat is not wasted.

Say no to AI waste!

Few people seem to be aware how wasteful current datacenter run AI is. Some companies are even trying to turn old atomic powerplants back on just to cover the elecricity use from the large AI servers they run. While we do see some use-cases for modern machine-learning technology, such as automated translation or image scanning, we strongly object to the really unsustainable current use. So please join us and say no to AI waste!