Should you worry about power costs – or power supply?
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Enterprise, Futures, Hardware on
Rising oil prices and financial uncertainty might not be the only reasons the electricity that runs your data centre could get more expensive. A cold winter might mean brownouts and blackouts, which means now is a good time to check your UPS capacity.
It took 21 gigawatts to send Marty Back to the Future. Britain generates 70-74gW on its own but with six out of ten nuclear power stations out of action and the usual ‘routine maintenance’ we’re down to about 57gW. That’s fine as long as the weather stays mild, but if we get an early cold snap demand could peak around 62gW. It’s more likely that the energy companies will just buy more electricity from France and put the price up to compensate than that we’ll see energy rationing or unexpected power cuts. Either way, you need to plan ahead.
Should you really worry? Owen Cole, the technical director at F5 Networks, thinks so. “There is currently debate around whether the UK faces a real electricity shortage in the near future. Given that there is credible, independent research to suggest there is a real threat, enterprises have no choice but to incorporate this scenario into their business continuity and disaster recovery planning They cannot assume consistency of power supply. Strategic planning should incorporate a two-fold approach - working out firstly how to conserve energy, and secondly how to use energy more efficiently without affecting the business.
“Modern data centres can use the equivalent energy to small towns. Given the huge amount of power involved, heat efficient resources must be considered to allow power conservation, so if electricity supply is cut, backup generators can use this excess energy to help ensure critical operations are running. On the usage side, imperatives include reviewing options around the dynamic provisioning and de-provisioning of equipment on a per-need basis, thereby using only necessary power.”
When I looked into green IT at the beginning of the year, it was rare for CTOs or IT directors to pay the power bills for the data centre or even now what they add up to. That’s changing, not least because of the money involved. And a good thing too; you can’t work out how to save money until you know what you’re spending it on. Do the measurements and find out what really saves you power - because for every gallon of fuel you save the company on telecommuting, you’ll have an associated cost for running the network, servers and conferencing equipment.
It’s the same with thinking about nuclear power; you can say that the problems with nuclear plants mean we need to build newer and better ones, or that they’re endemic to the nuclear energy industry and we need to look at other solutions. Personally I fancy the idea of a cable from Iceland; selling the output of its hydroelectric and geothermal resources should produce a better income stream than high-interest savings accounts…
MaryÂ
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Loading ...Comment by Dan Jones - October 16, 2008 on 10:36 am
Indeed power this winter does concern me - I’m considering buying a 2500KVA UPS unit + 2 battery packs, which should give over 10 hours runtime with my servers power supply (I have been given a great price for a 2nd user version, refurbed with new battery packs). This after 3 10 hour + powercuts this year so far….
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