Once at full capacity, one Google data plant in Oregon could use the same power as every home in Newcastle put togetherFew places throw the internet’s rapacious appetite for energy into relief more sharply than a remote 30-acre patch of scrubland in northern Oregon owned by Google.The site, on the fringes of the city of The Dalles on the banks of the Columbia river, is home to one of the world’s largest and most powerful data centres. Inside four towering air-conditioned warehouses sit tens of thousands of internet servers, acting as a clearing house for billions of pieces of data that stream from Google’s servers to users around the world each day.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/03/google-data-centres