The Internet has a new hurdle to clear: Obtaining a sufficient energy supply to meet its demands. Internet data centers, the giant server complexes that collect and disseminate data over optic networks, are putting great strains on their local electrical utilities. In some regions, there simply is not enough power to meet the data centers' ever-increasing needs. In the United States, the demand for Internet energy is highest in cities central to the technology industry - namely Seattle and San Francisco.

In October of this year, the City Council of Seattle enacted a law that gives the city's municipal utility the authority to charge a higher rate to new industrial customers needing larger quantities of power. In addition, the utility company plans to charge connection fees to these same customers to cover the expense of connecting them to the infrastructure. In some cases, an infrastructure ample enough to handle the new demands has yet to be built. Again the data centers will be expected to foot the bill.

Steve Secrist, the utility's director of rates and regulation, believes that the data centers' hunger pangs are only the beginnings of a larger trend. "The companies coming to us are saying, 'We want it yesterday,'" he explains. Indeed, the demand for Internet service has generated a nationwide boom in data center construction. For example, Exodus Communications plans to have 36 data centers open or under construction by the end of the year.

The seemingly insatiable appetite for electric power is the greatest threat to these data centers' growth. This past July, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter issued a report that stated that by the end of the year, "Exodus' data centers in Silicon Valley are expected to be consuming 25% of the area's power." In addition, a report issued last year by Greening Earth Society claimed that 8% of the U.S. overall electricity supply was being used by Internet-related equipment.

Keeping the energy required by data centers in mind, some analysts believe that small-scale generating plants are a viable alternative to the power-hungry back-up generators many data centers now employ. Ritchie Priddy, the manager of the Distributed Energy Resources Initiative at Louisiana State University, states succinctly, "instead of putting in a diesel generator as a back-up, companies could put in a small gas-fired turbine that would meet part or all of their power needs." Indeed, several companies have warmed to this idea and have already invested substantial resources in smaller generating plants which have been designed by size to meet the demands of a specific data center.

Source: Power Hungry
Robert Bryce
Interactive Week, Oct. 23, 2000
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