This is the third of four(!) presentations I delivered at an EUCI data center forum in December in San Francisco, and I've just committed to attend their second conference on this subject in Philadelphia in June (details posted when available). With a mixed audience of data center developers, utilities, and consultants, it was an interesting place to deliver some forthright commentary on the environmental consequences of siting large data center developments: Download EUCI Presentation 3 On one hand, utilities like attracting these loads, but don't necessarily like to reveal the carbon content of their power. On the other side, where... Continue reading

Wired Magazinne reports of an anomoly in the utility scale data center development world - the state of Utah has actually enabled a public entity to levy a utility users tax on the new National Security Agency facility being constructed on a former military base. I've watched with no small sense of dismay as municipalities, states, and perhaps even utilities trip overthemselves to attract data center development - offering tax breaks and exemptions and "economic development" utility tariffs. And just to be clear, I think there may be room for these incentives for new development that has a positive impact... Continue reading

I stopped in at the Uptime Institute Symposium this week in Santa Clara and visited the Sabey booth in the exposition hall (Sabey received a GEIT award at the event). I was impressed by the fact that they touted the energy efficient design and operation of their colocation data centers alongside notes on how cheap the power is feeding the ones in Washington State. For example, their data center under development in Quincy is fed with hydroelectric power from the adjacent Columbia River, at the stunningly low cost of 2.25 cents per kWh. That's wholly clean power that is less... Continue reading

I have to admit that my hackles went up when I first skimmed a blog post (published at Data Center Dynamics) by the estimable Mark Monroe (past Executive Director at The Green Grid) on the concept of "net zero overhead" energy use as a reasonable goal for data centers. On that first read, his proposal that data centers seek renewable and/or self-generation only for the cooling and power delivery and conditioning electric loads looks like a nascent industry cop-out: a way for operators to post a green sign on the door without addressing what can be ninety percent of their... Continue reading

So we have a story from the always excellent Data Center Dynamics (subscribe here) about another utility that is focusing economic development activities to attract data centers to their service area. This time it is Appalachian Power, a unit of American Electric Power, serving Tenessee, West Virginia, and parts of Virginia. The utility appears to be doing all of the "right" things to make their service area attractive to new DC development - in particular identifying specific locations where power capacity is available and can be quickly provided for new projects. (It appears that AEP is offering this service across... Continue reading

Here's the second presentation I delivered at the EUCI Data Center Forum in December in San Francisco. This one focuses on utility rebate and incentive programs for data centers and information technology. The presentation touches on the challenges utilities face in offering incentive programs for new data center construction, and in designing retrofit rebate programs for the sector. On the up side, it lists the leading utilities in the US who are addressing the market, and highlights the fact that utility energy efficiency program budgets have risen dramatically in the past few years. Download the slide deck: Download EUCI Pres... Continue reading

I'm surprised I haven't posted on this before, but I was proud to be a part of a team that has developed a Utility Data Center Energy Efficiency Program Guide that has been published by the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Program. The guide truly distills the best practices for utilities that want to promote energy efficiency for their data center customers, delivering cost-effective results. The report doesn't paper over the challenges in this market (getting trade allies on board, addressing split incentives, free-ridership risks, etc.), and does suggest numerous ways to overcome these market barriers. I like to point... Continue reading

Okay, so this time I'm giving plenty of notice! I'm the opening speaker on the second day of the Green Data Center Conference, sponsored by GSMI in Dallas June 5th and 6th. Here's the program agenda. I haven't prepared my presentation yet, but I now note that the second speaker of the day is KC Mares of Megawatt Consulting. That looks like a turnabout opportunity for the EUCI conference last year, where half of my presentation was made redundant by KC's presentation! Seriously, we'll sync up beforehand to weed out duplicate material. Continue reading

Late last year I participated in an EUCI forum on data centers in San Francisco, and thought I'd do a brief post on each of the four presentations I delivered over the day-and-a-half session. Check out EUCI - they offer a robust series of programs and sessions for the energy industry. We kicked off the event with an hour-and-a-half overview of emerging trends in the market from KC Mares, President of Megawatt Consulting. I haven't managed to find a copy of the slide deck - it would be well-worth getting a hold of it if you can. My first section... Continue reading

Just a personal note saying I am back to full concentration on my consulting practice after a four-month stint as Interim General Manager at the Valley of the Moon Water District. I served on the board of directors there for a dozen years and stepped down in November to pinch hit while the District sought a new GM. While there are obviously direct parallels between running a water agency and an energy utility, I don't have any key insights to offer that relate to IT and data centers - though there is a nexus with smart metering that is becoming... Continue reading

Almost embarassed to post this, as the course is currently fully booked, but I am once again joining Mark Hydeman of Taylor Engineering to present a course on IT and data center energy efficiency at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District next week. It's gratifying to reach our fourth or fifth sold out course at SMUD; if you check their educational offerings page you can send in an email to get on a waiting list. Continue reading

It appears from market surveys that server virtualization has become a mainstream technology: most operators of enterprise data centers have tried it and are moving to full adoption pretty quickly. At the same time, in the two-and-a-half million or so server rooms and closets in the US, there isn’t much data available, though in a small study and anecdotally server virtualization and consolidation doesn’t appear to have much traction. In California, where the major investor-owned utilities offered incentive programs for virtualization, the Energy Division, a unit of the California Public Utilities Commission devoted to protecting ratepayer interests, has ordered the... Continue reading

The market for virtualization software is proving something of a conundrum for utility energy efficiency program managers, leading to the cancellation of incentive programs in California, and hesitation by utilities in other states to debut program offerings. What’s the problem? Utilities are bound by program evaluation principles that prevent providing incentives for technologies that have reached market saturation, or in other words for technologies or measures that customers are implementing on their own without incentives. So answering the question about market penetration becomes crucial for utilities and program evaluators, and in the case of virtualization, the market statistics paint a... Continue reading

Thermal energy storage has often seemed an attractive technology application for data centers – providing a sure-fire way to cut energy costs while delivering redundancy for cooling that isn’t found in most facilities. Here’s how the case would play out: You’ve got a data center with a totally predictable day-to-day cooling load, so install a thermal energy storage system sized to the four- or six-hour peak rate period from my utility. (There is a big advantage to having this predictable load; TES systems for offices often fail in execution because control systems are unable to accurately predict loads.) Make ice... Continue reading

There are good reports in the trade press (notably Datacenter Dynamics and Data Center Knowledge) about data centers in New York and New Jersey who have coped with extended power outages in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, including tales of fuel delivery difficulties. I talked with one operator last week who has several facilities affected, and they indicated they were paying half a million dollars a day for diesel fuel to stay up and running. They also had the unfortunate circumstance of having one facility back on utility power, with another a stone's throw away still out. I had always... Continue reading

I'm sure I'm like everyone else in the country and world watching with sadness the situation in post-Sandy New York, and of course I am paying particular attention to information about utility outage response and tales of woe from major data centers in the area. Let's start with the first topic. There may be more substantive coverage in some local media outlets, but certainly the New York Times has done a pretty poor job explaining why restoration of service will take so long in the region. It may be that the utilities aren't doing a good job telling their story.... Continue reading

As you might expect, I thought that the panel session I moderated at the SVLG DC EE Summit was the best, though I will concede it wasn't the best attended! Our topic was driving energy efficiency in the server room and closet segment, and we started off with a presentation from Bill Tschudi from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who shared what they found after auditing a dozen or so server rooms in a diverse customer group. Bill noted that there were good low-cost opportunities for improvement at every site they surveyed and that the penetration of virtualization/consolidation was very low.... Continue reading

Another solid Silicon Valley Leadership Group Data Center Efficiency Summit yesterday at AMD in Sunnyvale - thanks to Anne Smart of SVLG for inviting me to attend and moderate a panel discussion. More on that in the next post, but first some notes from an interesting session on bringing direct current power distribution back to the data center market. It turns out that ABB has purchased a major stake in Validus, the start up that had the strongest play for the technology, and that HP is in the mix by offering plug-and-play DC power supplies for a pretty wide swath... Continue reading

The second of several posts commenting on the New York Times series of articles on data centers (here and here). The two articles (so far; there may be more!) written by James Glanz certainly generated a lot of attention - they were among the most popular on the Times web site after publication, and generated hundreds of comments each from readers. And of course that's not the only outlet for comment: see Rich Miller's piece on the Microsoft/Quincy article in Data Center Knowledge, and a passel of stories over at Data Center Dynamics (article here, and stinging commentary here and... Continue reading

Thought I'd comment on the two prominent articles in the New York Times on data centers (here and here) in a series of posts rather than one long one. The second article by James Glanz in the Times focused some attention on the pollution produced by backup diesel generators at data centers, and certainly criticized those occasions when generators are used beyond testing or to pickup load when utility service is down. There is no question that backup diesel generators, whether used for data centers or any other critical load, are pretty serious pollution sources, which is why they are... Continue reading

Caught this on a walk through San Francisco yesterday. There is something of a tradition in the City to place unwanted furniture out on the sidewalk, hoping that someone will find use in it. It generally works for everything other than IKEA case goods, which usually don't make it structurally from the move to the street. Well, what do we have here, leaning up against the lamp post, behind a chair? Why, it's a server! I was pretty surprised, as I have often been told that there is a solid recycle/reuse industry in place that takes old data center and... Continue reading

I'm headed to the capitol to emcee and moderate a forum focused on how data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools can help operators identify and capture unused capacity, with featured speakers from Eaton, Future Facilities, and RF Code. We'll also have a representative from Dominion Virginia Power on hand to talk about utility energy efficiency programs and incentives. Here's the press release for the event: Download DC Roadshow Release - 8-27-12 If you're nearby, and can join us on September 14th in Tyson's Corner, register to attend the half-day session here. Continue reading

I spent two fine days (foggy and cold) at the Asilomar conference Center on the Monterey Peninsula last week catching up with many colleagues in the energy efficiency industry, and attending a data center and IT study session on Tuesday afternoon. The session was called by Intel, and featured two dozen participants from utilities, energy service providers, researchers, and consultants like myself. We managed to dispense with the first part of the agenda, reviewing market barriers and the various industry-led data center and IT efficiency initiatives, in fairly short order. A draft version of a new utility program design guide... Continue reading

As a veteran of lots of trade shows, I have become a keen critic of those giveaway items that are meant to entice you to talk to salespeople manning information booths. (I try to talk to as many vendors as possible, simply as a courtesy to the booth staff and because you never know when you'll learn something new. If you've ever done booth duty, you know how lonely it can be!) Other than pens, and thumb drives when they first came out, most giveaways are best left in the booth, lest they come home with you and fill up... Continue reading

I've been watching with interest as regulators and legislators have started mandating that building owners "benchmark" their energy use. Typically this involves entering in some rudimentary data about the building (area, location, age, use) and coupling that with energy use to come up with a rating or score, usually on a scale of one to one hundred. Utilities have had to wrestle a bit with these initiatives, because of course building owners turn to them for historical billing information to complete the benchmarking tool. Generally that means setting up some type of automated process where building owners can log into... Continue reading