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

Chapter 12. Unique Challenges of Power

The early and perhaps most important consideration in outside plant power leveling, weighing, and ultimate selection is the operator. Choice or selection of the utility was less interesting or compelling before utility regulation. Regulation effectively divided the assets into generating companies and wire services.

The generating companies effectively create power and sell it. Their profits are driven by reduction in operating expenses, which are divided into human salaries and facilities costs. The fossil, nuclear, and hydroelectric power that the generating companies buy is marked up and taxed, but not by excessive margins. Generating companies are weighed and scored on their uptime availability and cost, which is driven by the commoditized source and relative demand.

If the source is in limited supply, the price will go up. Coal, for instance, is an abundant supply, but not very popular for ecological reasons. Fifty permits for new power plants were recently rejected! China currently uses more coal for generation than any other country and contributes more to the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions for largely the same reason. China builds a coal generation plant every two days! In the United States, natural gas reserves are in abundant supply but not mined. Coal is cheaper than gas. This will change. Less expensive regions of hydroelectric or nuclear generation should be $0.4 to $0.6 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) cheaper; coal or gas will be ...