For years I’ve spoken about the forward cost of energy due to increasing energy costs and climate legislation, which will affect the costs of some forms of energy generation. One of the key things I look for when I complete site selections for clients is the “forward” cost of electricity, which can often be much higher in a net-present value term than another site even though lower today than the same comparable site. This is because predictions of the increasing prices of electricity by market vary depending upon legislation, regulation, emissions requirements, and fuel prices. Since every utility has a difference mix of fuel sources, and each state has a different utility regulator, as well as different debt obligations, cost recovery and other factors, future utility prices will vary quite a bit. I believe that utilities with high carbon intensity or other emissions from their power generation will see higher price increases compared to utilities with lower carbon intensity per kWh. We’ve seen this in Northern Virginia with electricity prices increasing significantly over the last several years. I think we’ll see the same for other high-carbon states and those specifically with high coal production, such as North Carolina, Colorado, Texas, etc. Consider the forward price of electricity instead of just the current price of electricity into your site selection analysis.

And speaking of low-carbon intensity, Yahoo’s Quincy data center, which I led the completion of the first phase of construction before starting MegaWatt Consulting, recently released a new low-carbon option in managing our data centers: Goat Power. Enjoy this short video with my Yahoo friends Chris, Lisa and Ty and some new goat friends as well. Looks like one of the goats was particularly fond of Chris as well, or at least her shirt.

I spoke at the Green Data Center Conference in San Diego over the last three days. I taught a three-hour energy efficient data center workshop, also a one hour session about energy options and efficiency ideas for data centers, and also joined in on three panels: energy sources moderated by John Diamond, Organizations and Associations moderated by Bruce Myatt while I talked about the SVLG Data Center Efficiency program I co-chair and the McGill University high-performance co-location data center project case study that I helped with site selection and design ideas with Rumsey Engineers. Eric Soladay with Rumsey Engineers did a great job presenting the efficient data center design, with designed annual PUE of 1.06, and the very interesting snow-field concept for cooling this high-density data center without chillers or any other compressor-based cooling through 90% humidity and 90F summer time weather.

After 10+ years of talking about data center energy efficiency being important and concepts to improve the energy efficiency in data centers, as well as sharing my own experiences, I am so glad to hear that these ideas are sticking as well as the importance of energy efficiency. I was even more proud to that many of the ideas I have been pushing for the last several years as well as terms that I believe I coined nearly 10 years ago are sticking and being used in the regular vernacular of the industry: Holistic (designing and operating data centers as an entire system of hardware, software and infrastructure to achieve lowest total cost and highest availability for the intended purpose) and server hugger (the “need” (aka want) to have one’s data center and/or servers located nearby, often an emotional response and not a technical or rational need.)

Remember to look at your specific needs and also be creative with carbon reductions, like how you cut your data center grass!