Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A Strategic Implementation Guide

Chapter 6. Energy Use in Data Centers Globally Through 2012

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has presented the greatly anticipated report in response to the request from Congress stated in Public Law 109431; the report effectively states what everyone already knew: Data centers are growing, power consumption is extraordinary, and the existing utilities' infrastructure to satisfy the growth, redundancy, scalability, and burstability is in danger. What is the danger? The danger is the possibility of negative cascading for failed substations much like the Northeast regional outage that began in Ohio on November 16, 2003.

Exhibit 6.1 shows the negative cascading that can happen if a substation fails. Most portions of the network are being asked to accept 100% load "under anger" seamlessly. This would require all major components of the utility network station system nationally to be 100% redundant contiguous to 100% redundant networks nationally, which is cost prohibitive. In telecom terms, companies do not build assuming all clients will use the network at the same time. They assume 10% static utilization. This is similar for utility companies, which assume all businesses and homes do not turn the lights on at the same time. It was when the government owned or operated the power network and we paid for it; now is prohibitively expensive. With shareholders and customers paying for improvements, redundancy and scalability become negotiable.

The EPA study provides information on ...