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- Hacker News
Wow, these are really far north. I checked on Google Maps: They are all about as far north as Oulu. It must get incredibly cold during the winter. Wiki tells me the region is at or below freezing for about six to seven months per year! I am curious how much cheaper is cooling in these locations compared to more temperate climates in continental Europe.> Google will build new data centres in Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala- When Google was going hard on deploying renewables they stressed "additionality".
They didn't want to just buy clean hydro that already existed, or renewables that were going to get built anyway without their money, they wanted to be sure that their investment was growing the amount of clean energy available.
I'm hoping they have some justification like this for buying existing nuclear. They appear to be claiming that it would shut if they didn't pay in advance.
A similar deal by Amazon got shot down in America because the regulators realised it was shifting costs onto other grid users.
You'd assume that Finnish regulators are better than American regulators, but I’d like to see some evidence of that.
by ZeroGravitas - Will all these data centers really be needed in 5 or 10 years from now?
The technology, compression, etc, for models are getting better and better requiring less and less H/W and power to run the same inference power.
Perhaps our hunger for ever more powerful models will be enough to offset this, but I am not sure.
by linuxhansl - Somehow Hetzner saw at least part of it coming in 2018
https://www.hetzner.com/pressroom/five-years-helsinki/
These low prices are cost savings that we pass directly onto our customers; they come from the reduced energy prices that we pay in Finland compared to Germany, and also come from the colder climate and lower cooling requirements
by karussell - Google (or Tuike Finland as its known)
- paid 0e company tax in 2023/2024 (2025 hasn't been published yet)
- Doesn't generate any value added taxes as it only has one customer, Google Emea in Ireland
- Employs directly 120 persons
by kakoni - > As part of the deal, Google signed a 22-year contract with Finnish utility Fortum to buy up to 50% of the output from the Loviisa nuclear power plant.
> Finland has emerged as an attractive location for data centres because of its cool climate, plentiful low-carbon electricity and relatively uncongested power grid.
by wxw - This is basically due to Google probably rightly believing that electricity price in Finland is going up due to all these datacenters and also a pr stunt that the current government loves because they can claim that they aren't allowing these datacenters to raise electricity price.
This isn't investing in power infrastructure in any way, there is no reality where that nuclear plant wasn't staying in operation as long as they can possibly keep it running in the foreseeable future. Basically only way Google and Fortum will be building new nuclear capacity is by Finland promising to cover any electricity price below 15 cents per kWh in the market.
by Illotus - Good on Google.
Finland has low emissions from electricity :
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly
71 gC02eq/kwH
France, Sweden and Norway look like good places for data centres in Europe too on the basis of low electricity emissions.
by sien