NSA To Build 20-Acre Data Center In Utah 226
Hugh Pickens writes "The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that the National Security Agency will be building a one million square foot data center at Utah's Camp Williams. The NSA's heavily automated computerized operations have for years been based at Fort Meade, Maryland, but the agency began looking to decentralize its efforts following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and accelerated their search after the Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA — Baltimore Gas & Electric's biggest customer — had maxed out the local grid and could not bring online several supercomputers it needed to expand its operations. The agency got a taste of the potential for trouble January 24, 2000, when an information overload, rather than a power shortage, caused the NSA's first-ever network crash, taking the agency 3 1/2 days to resume operations. The new data center in Utah will require at least 65 megawatts of power — about the same amount used by every home in Salt Lake City — so a separate power substation will have to be built at Camp Williams to sustain that demand. 'They were looking at secure sites, where there could be a natural nexus between organizations and where space was available,' says Col. Scott Olson, the Utah National Guard's legislative liaison. NSA officials, who have a long-standing relationship with Utah based on the state Guard's unique linguist units, approached state officials about finding land in the state on which to build an additional data center. 'The stars just kind of came into alignment. We could provide them everything they need.'"
American Money, American Land, American Calls (Score:4, Insightful)
Knowing what NSA does, this Super Data Center would be used to spy, filter and record all the calls redirected it to by AT&T.
So, now we have an American agency, operating within America, and recording American telephone conversations without oversight of law.
And we have the galls to say USSR was a spy country...
Wonders will never cease!
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Nominal Intel servers use about 88W (Score:5, Interesting)
Nominal 8-core Intel servers use about 88 Watts now, not 500W. I performed a "green power review" for a customer this year. Their really old 8-core boxes used around 450W, before we replaced them for new and put 6 old physical servers onto each new physical server running VMs. We weren't even trying to push the minimal server solution and the new servers had 4GB RAM per core, so these aren't VM-specific servers, just normal current tech boxes. Also, we replaced all the internal drives beyond 2 for RAID1 boots with a redundant GigE SAN. Fairly cheap upgrades. Their old power draw was 18kVA and we dropped it to under 4kVA. Anyone want to trade out APC units? I know someone wasting power keeping their batteries charged.
Now, these weren't the big 24-128-way servers from HP, Sun, IBM, and Fujitsu with redundant fibre SAN and fibre networking, so your estimate could be very good. Some of those Cisco optics switches and routers can really pull power, especially if you use the power over ethernet features.
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To give you an idea how much computational power they could have using specilized hardware. Let's compare that to a 9800GTX.
65 megawatts / 140watts * 432gflops = ~200,000 TeraFlops or 200,000,000,000,000,000 Flops. For something like 40 to 80 million$.
Granted the accuracy of this estimate sucks as GTX's don't have networking suppport, and we need to cool things ect. But, they could also use more effecent hardware than the GTX.
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The microwulf [calvin.edu] (first cluster I could find data for) performs at 58.34 Mflops/Watt, so 58.34 Mflops/Watt * 65 Megawatts = 3,770 teraflops
The most efficient computer on the Green500 [green500.org] gets 536.24 Mflops/W so 536.24 Mflops/W * 65 Megawatts = ~ 34,083 teraflops
And of course, that's assuming they don't have lights or heat..
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What do they need heaters for? Aren't they about to install thousands of them already?
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But even that assumes all the IT load will be for servers. Certainly there will be power going to server
Re:American Money, American Land, American Calls (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:American Money, American Land, American Calls (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course this is assuming no one on AT&T makes international calls, or no one internationally calls US AT&T customers, like terrorists contacting a cell that is operating here.
This is probably a small percentage of AT&T's calls... however, if they had any sense the terrorists would get those Go phones that don't require ID to purchase and activate, so yea, it's likely AT&T isn't very interesting to the NSA. But I'm also pretty sure that NSA would never underestimate the stupidity of extremists since you need to be pretty retarded to blow yourself up in the name of a religion that's been twisted to make violence OK.
Truth be told, nobody really knows what NSA does but NSA and possibly the president so anyone here is talking out of their ass because they don't work there. If they did, they won't be much longer ;)
Re:American Money, American Land, American Calls (Score:4, Informative)
Which is what I said. Your sig is pathetically ironic. Fucking retard.
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So if part of the mission is to "Collect (including through clandestine means), process, analyze, produce, and disseminate signals intelligence information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes to support national and departmental missions", then listening to all our domestic communications "for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes to support national and departmental missions" might also be included in their charter.
Thats why they are listening to us all right
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Re:American Money, American Land, American Calls (Score:4, Interesting)
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So, now we have an American agency, operating within America, and recording American telephone conversations without oversight of law.
And no manpower to do anything useful with it.
Re:American Money, American Land, American Calls (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting that the NSA picked Utah for these "data centers". There's been a very interesting history of the confluence of the intelligence community, mormonism and the "wandering bishops".
I highly recommend historian Peter Levenda's excellent book on the subject (as well as other fascinating subjects), Sinister Forces - A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft.
But if you read it, prepare to lose some sleep.
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Ha! That's the first thing I thought of -- LDS linguists as intelligence moles at the NSA, able (required?) to report back to the LDS leadership council what they find.
FWIW, I have had a great time in Utah. Despite their weird liquor laws, I never had any problem buying or getting served liquor in any restaurant. The roads were good, the skiiing better, and almost no riffraff to be found late night in SLC.
I don't care how many wives they have, as long as they're not porking 15 year olds.
Re:American Money, American Land, American Calls (Score:4, Informative)
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Its amazing to me that even after major legal issues being brought up in the news and by Congress, that even after the president has to pardon phone companies and the like to retroactively avoid further legal issues for domestic spying, people like the anonymous moron above still think it requires a tinfoil hat to believe the American government is spying on perfectly innocent people as part of a huge dragnet scam wasting taxpayer money.
Imagine spending all that domestic spy money on the health care reforms
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Re:The U.S. government is corrupt. (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. government spends more on surveillance of its citizens than any country in the entire history of the world.
Care to cite that?
The U.S. government has invaded or bombed 25 countries since the end of the 2nd world war, all for profit.
Profit eh? So how much money does the US government earn every time a B1 Bomber drops another bomb? They have to pay for those planes, pilots and bombs, and get no monetary value in return. So where's the profit?
In Iraq, oil and weapons investors like Bush and Cheney wanted control over the oil, and didn't care how many people they killed. In Afghanistan, oil investors want to build an oil pipeline.
Care to explain why this mythical oil pipeline STILL hasn't shown up? It has been what, 8 years now since Moore made up this talking point? Also, if we invaded Iraq for the oil, then why do we not have ANY of the oil?
The U.S. government has a higher percentage of its people in prison than any country ever in the history of the world, over 6 times higher than in Europe, for example. Some U.S. states, such as Oregon, spend more on prisons than on education!
Perhaps there is a higher percentage of criminals in the US than in Europe, or our law enforcement is more efficient, or, gasp, we have a bunch of dumb laws that put dumb people in jail? So what.
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Perhaps we were simply incompetent? Not like the administration was known for being right all the time.
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"Halliburtonâ(TM)s $2.5 billion "Restore Iraqi Oil" (RIO) contract[26] was supposed to pay for itself as well as reconstruction of the entire country." [wikipedia.org]
more [salon.com]
Notably 1:07 to end [youtube.com]
I respect all of the posts of yours I have read, just showing you another perspective.
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Apparently you are unaware of the writings of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson? Or his impact on the elections in the 1970s?
So... (Score:5, Funny)
The secret service builds a datacenter and announces that in mainstream media?
It will be a very large data center.
It will be important.
It will be secret.
And it will be located at Utah's Camp Williams.
That's very amicable to other secret services. Saves them some searching. :D
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Well, maybe the true secret datacenter is built somewhere else. The best way to prevent you from searching for it is when you believe you already know where it is.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Well yes, obviously it's a decoy. The NSA knows that we would immediately jump to the conclusion that this is a decoy, and start looking elsewhere. In fact, they're counting on it. They want us looking elsewhere so that they can install their top secret datacentre hardware in Utah.
Except... why make it so conspicuously obvious. They make a show about building this datacentre, so we would look elsewhere. We know that they want us to look anywhere but their decoy, so we look at the decoy. While we're busy looking at the decoy, they build elsewhere. Clever.
However, they've got to know that there's enough people to look at both the new datacentre and all the other sites. Something else is going on. They've got scurrying around like ants, looking for this "true" datacentre. We're focused on the ground. We're focused on the NSA. This isn't about NSA datacentres. This is about CIA satellites.
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I clearly cannot choose the wine in front of me!
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Getting into it surreptitiously will either be:
a) Extraordinarily difficult, or
b) a) + life threatening.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
"Surveillance only tells us that they don't store the data on the rooftop"
(ok, it's from a rather lame Simpsons episode, but I'm sure some will get the reference)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's kindof hard to hide the massive power transmission infrastructure, also. You don't just "hide" a facility that has that much electricity coming from civilian sources going into it.
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Not really. Keep it close to industrial sites and it isn't hard at all. A couple of projects I am working on are easily 30MW services. What gets hard is breaking the loads into enough pieces that you can't get any real information from tracking the power demand, which requires significant on-site generation and stored energy.
Looking at one of my clients annual time-of-use power data, I can quickly tell how their business is doing and what kind of anomalies and business spikes they have. It becomes much
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One tip dont use your own car
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about some stealth? Paint GOOGLE onto the sides of your cars and be very blatant about taking pics and nobody will think of anything.
It's like breaking into a warehouse. You don't use flashlights and sneak about. You turn on the store lights and walk around like you belong there and nobody will think of anything ill.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also carry a clipboard. Nobody will question a guy taking notes on a clipboard.
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If someone gets suspicious, walk straight up to him with that "can I interest you in Amnesty International" look on your face. You'll be left in peace, people will actually go out of their way to go out of your way.
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The secret service builds a datacenter and announces that in mainstream media?
It can be a ploy to divert public attention from other more important clandestine projects to this decoy.
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, now you know... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, now you know where your can find those emails you accidentally deleted or forgot to backup. Safely in the hands of god, err, the NSA.
Sixty five megawatts (Score:2, Funny)
65 megawatts of power -- about the same amount used by every home in Salt Lake City
Those must be some big houses. I wonder how much they all use in total!
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There's a Mormon joke there somewhere.
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There's a Mormon joke there somewhere.
They have to store a year's supply of extra electricity in their basement.
How's that?
Re:Sixty five megawatts (Score:4, Funny)
A Catholic priest went into a barber shop for a haircut. When he was finished, the barber refused to take payment saying, "You are a man of the cloth... this is a free service that I offer to you." The Priest thanked the barber and went on his way. The next morning the barber found seven fishes and seven loaves of bread on his doorstep in gratitude from the priest.
The next week, a Jewish Rabbi went into the same shop for a cut. Again the barber refused payment saying, "You are a man of God... this is a free service that I offer to you." The next morning the barber found a fitting gift from the Rabbi.
The following week, two LDS Missionaries went into the shop for haircuts. Again, the barber refused payment saying, "You work in the service of God... this is a free service that I offer to you." The next morning the barber arrived to find 12 LDS Missionaries on his doorstep.
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Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
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I suppose thats our job as 'informed' citizens though.. to constantly second guess our government.
Yes, it is because 99 times out of 100 there is some sort of bullshit going on that will never see the light of day.
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You mean back when the Cold War and other efforts kept the wool over your eyes?
Tom Lehrer said, when he quit doing comedy in 1973, that "political satire became redundant the day Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In fact, (Score:5, Insightful)
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Good idea!
Travelling collections?
I can't believe that the National Parks System hasn't already done this. They're all clustered around the east coast - we really need to get some here in the midwest.
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His point is better than that. The federal government basically runs an enormous jobs program in the Washington D.C. area, an area that is pretty much over developed at this point. Placing operations in other cities would have the effect of improving the economy in those cities and (probably) saving the government money (by lowering overhead costs and such).
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Still, I intersection of the demographics "want to work for the government" and "IT cracks" is already small enough even without intersecting it also with "willing to move to backwater Utah".
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Maybe they'll have a fly-in, fly-out policy like Area 51? :-)
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You're talking out your ass.
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Not only does it lead to jobs (and corrupt powers) being in one location, but it also leads to ease of t
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Actually it would have the effect of increasing costs because decentralizing operations also means decentralizing support functions (IT, HR, procurement, etc... etc...). Your tooth-to-tail ratio goes to hell in a handbasket. Then you have to figure in the need to duplicate infrastructure. Then figure in increased travel and communications costs. Then figure in the costs of increased 'friction' caused by less efficient (I.E. non face-to-face) communications. Etc... Etc...
There are reason why cor
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It's true that moving 1,000 people won't create many problems - but it won't solve any either. It's akin to peeing on a forest fire.
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On either end. A city big enough to absorb 1,000 workers, won't notice the increase. A city big enough to attract and hold 1,000 workers, won't notice the increase. A city big enough to have a pool of workers big enough to recruit 1,000 workers with the appropriate skills won't notice the increase.
notice the attempt at steganography above (Score:2)
JEWEL OK HEADS DC 1000 DC EPA
obviously some sort of instructions on assembling a dc powered environmental disruptor
don't think the NSA isn't noticing this friend, they have extensive steganographic data mining techniques. we're onto you
National Zoo in Front Royal, VA (Score:2)
In one case, the Smithsonian's National Zoo has a facility in Front Royal, Virginia:
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndScience/CRC/FrontRoyal/default.cfm [si.edu]
Now its the real deal (Score:4, Interesting)
The FBI, US military intelligence, UK, Australia, Canada, NZ where trusted keep tabs on US interests, internal and external.
Now the NSA is turning inward. Everything that was aimed at "the bad guys" "around the world' is now aimed at you in suburbia.
If the FBI wants your name, they ask your ISP.
if the NSA wants your name
Sounds like a new movie brewing... (Score:5, Funny)
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More accurate would be "The Hills Have Packet Sniffers" but that just isn't catchy.
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Nice work, Senator Hatch. (Score:3, Insightful)
Do I smell some juicy contracts for Novell as well?
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Well that should cement Utah's status... (Score:5, Funny)
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Thats because they are honest folk, with strong ethics and a healthy dose of religion. They know that those sex workers bust their humps and deserve an honest paycheck for their services. Not like the heathens in other parts of the world that just mooch off the free porn.
Utah-ians take their porn like their church. They go in all the way. The moochers who get porn for free are like people who only go to church on Sunday, they just don't have their hearts or their wallets in it.
Nothing secret here (Score:4, Interesting)
Anything that's a million square feet is not going to be much of a secret.
"What's this building that I'm driving past for 5 minutes on the freeway?"
"Oh, that's just a, uh... big empty warehouse building."
This is all just a distraction from the "real secret", a 2 million square foot datacenter that they're building in lake Superior's salt mines.
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datacenter that they're building in lake Superior's salt mines.
Salt Lake, salt mine, either way its a smart move to build an NSA outpost with access to a lot of salt.
-1 Unfunny is not the same as "I don't get it"
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I really think that access to salt isn't a priority.
As the articles state, the locations of existing power conduits was one of the largest deciding factors.
Camp Williams also has a lot more going for it than meets the eye, seeing as how it's on a river's cliffside. It wouldn't be that difficult to put most of the NSA's datacenter into the ground, and just cool it with the help of the local river.
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This is all just a distraction from the "real secret", a 2 million square foot datacenter that they're building in lake Superior's salt mines.
Well, thanks a lot for blowing it! There's one 2 million square foot datacenter gone to waste...
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Take for example Area 51.
It's secrets are kept secret because it's remote; its active security measures are second to that.
Then take for example the Pentagon.
It's secrets are kept secret because of higher quality active security measures.
Even if something is a million square feet, what goes on inside can still be a well-maintained secret. Protecting the infrastructure may seem important, until you start thinking that what goes on inside that infrastructure is more important.
US Government Hypocrisy (Score:3, Funny)
They should talk to google... (Score:2)
They would actually benefit from sitting down with the google boys, and asking them about their power generating machines using solar cells...made especially for them. This conveys they pay no electricity, or almost none, (not including the small offices)
for their huge data centers... but do you think the NSA cares about saving their tax payers dollars,of course not!
Too bad we can't force them to try and use the most cost efficient way of doing things, especially the military as well!
isn't that the site we blew up (Score:2)
in the opening scene of terminator salvation?
I, for one, welcome our new Mormon overlords. (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome our new Mormon overlords.
Hmmmm (Score:2)
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these.
This is a failed plan (Score:2)
See when they said 65 megawatts of power I figured they would build a
What clearances will the NSA require? (Score:2)
I am guessing it will be mainly top-secret. But DoD/TS or SSBI/TC or TS/SCI, or something else? I wonder if they will use anything less that TS? Like DoD/Secret?
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Air conditioning in the summer, heating in the winter. I've only been in SLC in the autumn and spring, but at that time the temperature alternated between being cold enough that water left on my hair after a shower froze a few minutes after going outside, and hot enough that I was too warm even with the air conditioning running. Nice beer, but not a climate I'd like to live in for very long.
On the other hand, the cold winters mean that they can only run the air conditioning in the data centre half the ye
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Well, it just depends on the number of residences.
65 MW is not a lot for 100,000 homes. Hell, it's not even a lot for 30,000 homes.
Go check your electric hour. How many kW are you pulling right now, even without any of the following high-wattage appliances on:
Microwave
Hair dryer
Vacuum cleaner
Electric Oven
Electric heat
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I see... there is confusion on the meaning of the word "every".
I think your interpretation was that "every" means "each"... when instead the term "every home in..." means the same as "all homes in...".
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Tweet, blog on the upcoming riots, deaths and expect a visit.
Re:What does NSA do ? Why do we need CIA ? (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, without a security clearance and need-to-know you will never know what the NSA does. And then forget what MSNBC has convinced you is true about the agency; there are very strict rules as to how any "signals" involving US citizens are handled. There is more foreign collection than you could possibly imagine, and that is where they expend most of their power.
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I presume you are telling us this because you have the security clearance to know so.
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Here's a declassified version of the restrictions against collecting on US Persons, for example. This alone debunks 99% of the stupid comments that always pop-up in any NSA related thread. http://cryptome.org/nsa-ussid18.htm [cryptome.org]
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The NSA does signal intelligence. This includes functions such as breaking codes through cryptoanalysis, etc. The CIA is in the 'old-fashioned' spy business. Neither are directly responsible for "stopping nut jobs from blowing up buildings" on home soil: that job, at the time, would have fallen to the FBI, the Federal Marshals, the ATF, and state and local law enforcement. Currently, the agency tasked with this job is the Department of Homeland Security.
Besides, we know from media accounts that the CIA
Re:What does NSA do ? Why do we need CIA ? (Score:4, Informative)
Are we supposed to believe they do not monitor and listen in any domestic conversations ?
Yes you are. And you should read USSID 18 while you are at it and see for yourself that their are specific restrictions against listening in on domestic conversations. You will also learn that it requires a warrant granted by the Attorney General (not the Director of the NSA, not the President, not a mythical National Security Czar, Not Your Mom).
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Exactly. Notice they're going to the state with the lowest industrial rate for electricity in the country at 4.43 cents/kwh.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html
How do they generate electricity so cheaply? 82% of their generation is from coal, 16.4% from natural gas. Renewables only 1.6%.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/sept05ut.xls