Apple pulls out of data center in Athenry due to fcuked up planning and gob****es

marno21 wrote: »

Almost every project/development in Ireland is seeing these kind of NIMBY objections as if these projects were benefit-less wastes of money that are solely being built to interfere with the lives of local residents and destroy the environment

Hopefully this will generate enough negative publicity to kickstart planning reform. It has to happen as the country is being held up beyond belief by this issue.

Not so much NIMBY for Brian McDonagh though, more like IMBY PLEASE!

Data centres don't provide many jobs. The only meaningful number would be during construction, so temporary.

So the main objector was in it for his own gain!
Bloody idiot.
Meanwhile Google, Amazon and Facebook have built data centres in the Dublin area without using this guys Wicklow site.

Pelvis wrote: »

150 jobs were to be permanent.

Up to 150

What a nonsense.

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

You could of done with it.

Short term jobs, perhaps.
Long term? Jury is out.
Good article here:
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/data-centre-growth-comes-at-price-for-irish-infrastructure-1.2759291

Overall, it shows the reliance we have on FDI.
If anything, I'm glad the planning process worked. Just because Apple want, doesn't mean Apple should get. Maybe pay your fair share of taxes...

I guess I'll be a minority voice in this.

(popcorn! delicious popcorn for all!)

While I think this country's planning system is beyond dysfunctional and needs to be scrapped, and this just highlights that, Apple themselves need to shoulder some of the blame here. Their idea of dropping this in a rural area and not somewhere already zoned for such developments was typically high-handed of them. Had they chosen an existing technology park or a more urban commercially zoned plot, it would be built by now.

What was so specific to Athenry that perhaps couldn't be afforded to Cork, Dublin, Limerick or even Galway City itself where there are plenty of industrial zoned spaces?

Thats great news, we dont have the excess electricity that data center sheds will use, the likes of Norway & Denmark do.
If that data centre was going to be run "with up to 150 permanent staff required to run it” it should never be built, data centres should be only run on a handful of staff.
And the 500 million to build was at least 90% apple servers, brought in without any return to the Irish Taxpayer.

Hurrache wrote: »

Many of them are carbon neutral these days and run off renewable energy.

If this centre had been developed to it's full capacity, it would have consumed as much power as the whole of Dublin. It would have meant expanding The country's electricity generation capacity massively, and because of the deficiencies with renewables, that would have meant massive expansion of conventional power generation capacity for when it's dark and the wind isn't blowing, as well as renewables. This centre might have pushed Ireland's CO2 emissions up so much that we would have incurred huge EU fines for missing CO2 targets. We might have just dodged a bullet.

billbond4 wrote: »

Thats great news, we dont have the excess electricity that data center sheds will use, the likes of Norway & Denmark do.
If that data centre was going to be run "with up to 150 permanent staff required to run it” it should never be built, data centres should be only run on a handful of staff.
And the 500 million to build was at least 90% apple servers, brought in without any return to the Irish Taxpayer.

The data Centre runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The place I work in is open for 9 hours with 40 staff. If that was open 24 hours, that would need 3 shifts of 40 staff. That data Centre was massive.

Do the math.

Estrella Salty Leak wrote: »

I'd be in favour of the data centre but that 150 number sounds way off.

On site there would only be maintenance staff, security, etc. Day to day these things shouldn't require must effort. Open to correction but any data centre I've ever been in was pretty sparsely populated.

The management of the data centre would most likely be done centrally from wherever they manage their other centres.

Job announcements like these are easy to make. Nobody every follows up and it's not a firm commitment.

But let's say it's just 30 full time jobs locally. That in itself is a good thing.

In a previous thread, I did an analysis of potential employee numbers based on the submitted plans. (https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=104944196)

Here it is again for fun;


To get some kind of handle on potential employment, I had a look at the planning submission and plans;

http://gccapps.galwaycoco.ie/viewexternaldocuments/ViewPDF?ref=1971694

This is certainly more than 'a few engineers to keep it ticking over' kind of facility, but not something that could be termed 'a major employer'

The main logistics and admin building contains 21 dedicated offices, 3 open plan office spaces, a facility operations centre and 9 conference rooms. There are several other workspaces related to logistics etc. There's no dedicated canteen or kitchen area, just a break room.

The main car park has ~140 spaces provided.

Each data centre has several offices and work areas with 20 dedicated car parking spaces.

It's probably reasonable to assume that the facility could support maybe 50 workers. Assuming a skeleton security and technical staff on 2x out of hours shifts, the total might be around 70.

Am open to correction, of course, as I'm not an expert at reverse calculating staff ratios based on office space provisions. However, there's a lot more office and workspace provided here than some of the employment naysayers could be comfortable with.

billbond4 wrote: »

Thats great news, we dont have the excess electricity that data center sheds will use, the likes of Norway & Denmark do.
If that data centre was going to be run "with up to 150 permanent staff required to run it” it should never be built, data centres should be only run on a handful of staff.
And the 500 million to build was at least 90% apple servers, brought in without any return to the Irish Taxpayer.

Christ where to start.
Apple’s DC’s are all very energy efficient. Ireland is sought after as the crap weather year around leads to less cost spent on cooling. Between Server engineers, storage engineers, maintenance etc you could probably hit 50 jobs or so.
Regardless the whole planning permission is a joke on this country. Any person related to a business entity shouldn’t be allowed to protest against a competitor. The only concerns should be the environment and local people who’s house prices might be negatively impacted.
Dunes/Tesco’s are notorious for blocking Aldi/Lidl submissions and this all needs to be kicked to touch.

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Can you tell us about your intellectual disability?

Really?

Just because my opinion differs, I really don't think you need to stoop to that level.

Post reported.

whiskeyman wrote: »

Really?

Just because my opinion differs, I really don't think you need to stoop to that level.

Post reported.

There’s opinions and then there's stupidity. Wanna guess which one is you?

Hector Savage wrote: »

Can't imagine they'd be close to carbon neutral ?

They consume MASSIVE amounts of power the air conditioning alone is a killer ...

The technology is there, there's articles out there for example as to how Facebook's data centres, such as the one at Clonee, achieve it. Can't remember the details now but probably between low energy, green energy, carbon offsets and we're not particularly warm with plenty of cool winds.