Data centers vulnerable to climate change?

There is a vulnerable relationship between the environment, the power grid and data centers.  For example last year in Texas, U.S.A, a state with data centers of several notable IT companies, including WordPress.Com, Cisco, Rackspace and Host Gator, nearly escaped rolling blackouts because of extreme weather conditions. Extreme heat led to extreme electricity demand for cooling equipment and the extreme drought led to production problems for the power generators because of shortage of cooling water. And this is not the only example. During recent warm, dry summers in 2003, 2006 and 2009 several thermoelectric power plants in Europe were forced to reduce production, because of restricted availability of cooling water.

A recent study, published in Nature Climate Change, projects an increasing vulnerability of electrical supplies in the US and Europe because of climate-change.

The combined impacts of lower summer river flows and higher river water temperatures and the legislative restrictions on the amount of water withdrawn for cooling and temperatures of the water discharged can lead to cooling-water scarcity.

In the United States and Europe, at present 91% and 78% of the total electricity is produced by thermo-electric (nuclear and fossil-fuelled) power plants, which directly depend on the availability and temperature of water resources for cooling.

Worldwide, freshwater withdrawals for cooling of thermo-electric power plants are highest in North America (224 km3/yr), followed by Europe (121 km3/yr), which together represent about 86% of the global thermoelectric water withdrawals.

The research shows a likely decrease in thermoelectric power generating capacity of between 6-19% in Europe and 4-16% in the United States for the period 2031-2060, due to lack of cooling-water. The likelihood of extreme (>90%) reductions in thermoelectric power generation will, on average, increase by a factor of three.

Disruption of power supply is a significant concern for the data center sector. Reduced production, or temporary shutdown, of several thermoelectric power plants, resulting in increased electricity prices and raising concerns about future energy security in a changing climate.

Data Center stakeholders should closely watch the current Climate Change discussions and Power Grid developments and make power or electricity management as one of their core work processes.

The resemblance between the Power Grid and the Data Center

At the Datacentres 2012 conference in Nice, there were some very interesting discussions about the interrelation and resemblance between the power grid and the data center.

Christian Belady started the conference with a keynote speech where he raised the question; Why are we separating the power generation from the data center?

Why do we generate power in a separate power plant and struggle to get this power by transmission and distribution networks to a separate data center where data is generated by computers?

Why don’t we instead bringing the data generation (computers) to the power plant and get rid of the transmission and distribution grid?

The business case for this transformation is based on difference in price for a power grid network  per kilometer and a glass fiber network per kilometer.

Belady was emphasizing to think out of the box and to question what is really necessary to run a data center. But Belady also stated to think about using ideas and concepts from other industries. He pointed at the resemblance between managing a power grid and managing a data center in terms of variable work load, capacity management, load peak shaving etc.

That is indeed a very interesting thought.

The rise of electricity consumption is spectacular. From the seventies onwards the worldwide growth is more than 200% . The growing dynamics in supply and demand of electric energy put a lot of pressure on the current power grid. For a power grid demand and supply of power must be the same, in equilibrium, else there is the risk that this infrastructure shuts down. Loss in transmission and the level of congestion on any particular part of the grid will influence the dispatch of the generated units of electricity. For a power grid the load or the required amount of electric power falls into three categories: base load, intermediate load and peak load. Base load refers to a relatively constant output of power plants over a period. In contrast, peak load refers to surges in electricity demand that occur at specific, usually predictable periods, such as evening peak load. Finally intermediate load refers to the fluctuating demand for electricity throughout the day.

Question is, how the current power grid must handle the new demands and new dynamics real-time?

But the same can be said about the data centers and networks or “IT grid”.

The rise of data consumption is spectacular. From the eighties onwards the worldwide growth has been exponential. The growing dynamics in supply and demand of data (cloud computing) put a lot of pressure on the current IT grid. For an IT grid demand and supply of power must be the same, in equilibrium, else there is the risk that this infrastructure shuts down (time outs because of latency). Loss in transmission and the level of congestion on any particular part of the IT grid will influence the dispatch of the generated units of data. For an IT grid we also can differentiate the load or the required amount of data processing into three categories: base load, intermediate load and peak load. Base load refers to a relatively constant output of data centers over a period. In contrast, peak load refers to surges in data demand that occur at specific, usually predictable periods, such as mid day peak load. Finally intermediate load refers to the fluctuating demand for data throughout the day.

Question is, how the current IT grid must handle the new demands and new dynamics real-time?

There is the issue in the data center in how to service, provide and to organize, in an (energy) efficient way, the base load, intermediate load and peak load. The importance of capacity management is growing just as the need for control and administration. As the data center industry relies increasingly on information to operate the data center system, two infrastructures must now be managed: not only the Data Center Infrastructure, but also the Information Infrastructure for control and coordination. This need can be found back in the rising interest in topics like data center automation, data center infrastructure management (DCIM), service orchestration and management. This is also the point where the data center industry can learn from the power industry who have dealt with this issues for almost a century and now are transforming the current power grid to a Smart Grid to deal with the new demands and new dynamics.

Power markets, Power prices and Data Centres in Europe

Based on a report I wrote for Broadgroup I was invited speaker at Data Centres 2012, a European data centre conference whose theme is “energizing the future of Information Technology delivery,” scheduled for May 23-24 in Nice, France.

Some thoughts and high lights from the report  ‘Power market, Power prices and data centres in Europe’  (which is available from BroadGroup) were shared in this presentation.

The conference included 100 speakers, three conference theatres, and five master classes. The attendance was more than 750 professionals from 30 different countries. The two-day event offered insight, learning, networking, marketing and business opportunities across data centre and cloud markets in Europe. To get an impression of this event have a look at the blog entries from Michael Manos with some impressions.

Outline of the given presentation ‘Power markets, Power prices and Data Centres in Europe’

The quality and availability of the data center stands or falls with the quality and availability of the power supply to the data center. Besides knowledge of the retail prices of electricity it is also necessary to have a good understanding of the current trends in electricity production and consumption. At the end data, centers have to compete with many other consumers to get access and supply of scarce energy sources. Therefore it is also important to have an overview about current developments and trends in the electricity supply chain and electricity infrastructure.

Key take aways …

Data Center stakeholders should closely watch the current Power Grid developments in Europe

and

Data Center operators must make Power or Electricity management as one of their core work processes.

As we all know the quality and availability of the data center stands or falls with the quality and availability of the power delivered by the power grid to the data center.

The IEA’s estimates are that the amount of money required for the implementation of the necessary investments is close to 1900 billion euro!

Japan Power Grid crisis: countdown for shutdown

Hokkaido Electric Power Company has started with the shut down of reactor N0. 3 of the Tomari atomic power plant. By Sunday, the unit of 912 MW will officially come offline.
Although the shut down is due for its regular maintenance checkup this is a dramatic event for Japan. It is the last of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors that will be switched off and then Japan will be completely without nuclear power.

Until last year, before the Fukushima accident, Japan was planning to generate half its electricity from nuclear energy by 2030. But now in one year time about 50 gigawatts of nuclear power plant capacity has been switched off, that is about 30% of the electricity generation in Japan.

The government already projects a 5% power shortage for Tokyo, while power companies predict a 16% power shortfall in western Japan, which includes the major industrial city of Osaka.

Unsurprisingly, this loss of electricity generation in Japan is leading to massive changes. Much of the capacity that has been lost or suspended has been replaced by carbon-heavy fossil fuels generating thermal power. Oil, coal and gas now generate about nearly 90 percent of Japan’s electricity, with hydropower accounting for about 8 percent and other renewables (solar, wind, etc.) making up the balance. The International Energy Agency estimates shutting all nuclear plants increases oil demand by 465000 barrels a day to 4.5 million barrels a day, raising Japan’s daily costs by about $100 million.

The business sector starts to feel the consequences of the growing dependence on fossil fuels. Tokyo Electric Power Company faced heavy criticism when it announced that it would increase rates starting from the first of April .The Japan Information Technology Services Industry Association in late March demanded the hike be postponed but the electricity supplier said it had been facing with mounting costs for fossil fuels to run thermal plants because all of its nuclear reactors were shut.

On top of this Japan is also facing another problem. Without nuclear power, Japan is projected to produce an additional 180 million-210 million tons of emissions this fiscal year compared to the base year of 1990, when emissions totaled 1.261 billion tons. That wipes out a significant chunk of reductions Japan achieved earlier. Officials believe Japan can still barely meet its commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions during the five-year period through 2012 by an average of 6 percent from 1990 levels.

To stimulate the use of alternative energy sources, the government is easing restrictions on land use for solar and wind power. It also is relaxing regulations on small hydropower projects and regulations on drilling for geothermal energy in national parks. More crucially, last week it approved feed-in tariffs that are expected to spur investment by guaranteeing higher returns for renewable than for conventional energy. From July, utilities will be required to buy electricity from renewable energy from providers at a rate of 42 yen ($0.52) per kilowatt hour (kWh) for solar energy, 23 yen/kWh for wind power and 30-35 yen/kWh for small-scale hydropower. These preferential rates will apply for 10 to 20 years depending on the energy source.

Just like last year changes can also be expected on the demand side by including the weekend and night operation of factories to spread the electricity load, and much less use of air conditioning.

It will be a close match to get power supply and demand equation right and data center providers shall be fighting again to prevent rolling black outs this summer.

Energy efficient Data Center ≠ Green Data Center

“Many IT companies are simply  choosing to attach their modern information factories to some of the dirtiest sources of electricity, supplied by some of the dirtiest utilities on the planet” says Greenpeace.

In their latest report ‘How green is your cloud?’, Greenpeace has criticized the cloud computing industry saying that cloud providers “are all rapidly expanding without adequate regard to source of electricity, and rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds.”

In response to the report, Urs Hoelzle Google’s Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure in a statement published in the New York Times said that: “The company welcomed the Greenpeace report and believed that it would intensify the industry’s focus on renewable energy.“  Where as Apple and Amazon raises questions about the credibility of the estimates in the Greenpeace report, and illustrates the difficulty of seeking to estimate data center power usage

The discussion on how accurate and valid the estimates in the report are is indeed important but the real problem which is addressed shouldn’t be missed and that is; if an energy efficient data center  equals an green data center.

In the data center world the last two years much attention is given to the usage of PUE as a KPI for energy efficiency. PUE has served its goal to get a rough indication of the energy efficiency of a data center but it has its limitations. For example if servers that were not being used are shut down this can lead to a bigger PUE. But the biggest flaw, from a green IT perspective, in using the PUE is that there is no relation to the Carbon emission based on the electricity that is being used.

This CO2 emission flaw was already addressed in 2010 by Eirikur Hrafnsson CEO  of  Greenqloud (see blog Greenqloud propose green PUE ) and later by the Green Grid with a white paper on the Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) metric.

Energy efficiency and carbon emission are mixed-up. You can be very energy inefficient and still have zero carbon emission and vice versa you can be very energy-efficient and still have a large carbon emission. Therefore cloud providers and data center operators must look not only at how efficiently they are using electricity, but also the sources of electricity that they are choosing, a detail that many companies are unwilling to disclose on their own. The energy sources of the power grid isn’t the only energy issue. A lot of data centers are using diesel generators as back up or are using generators because of  sub-standard or non-existent grid connection. The claim of green Cloud Computing services and green data centers can only be proven if the providers are more transparent about their energy sources.

If operators neglect carbon emission, dont care because it are external costs, it is “out of scope” for their company or they feel they are not directly responsible, it will come back to them like a boomerang. Resilience to a changing climate demands for decarburization of the energy sources we are using to ensure sustainability. If carbon emission wont be reduced, the government will use rigorous policy instruments to charge for this external costs.

As rightly stated in the Greenpeace report, to create a  more sustainable data center there are several steps that can be taken:

• Power purchase agreements for renewable energy; Many operators s are recognizing that their influence and market power give them the opportunity and responsibility to demand clean energy investments. Operators can take charge of their electricity supply chain by signing long-term contracts to buy renewable electricity from a specific source through a utility or renewable energy developer via a power purchase agreement (PPA) to help drive renewable electricity onto the grid.

• Onsite renewable energy;  Operators can install renewable energy on site to generate power for their own operations. For many facilities however, it may be difficult technically or economically to power a significant portion of a large data center with on-site renewable energy. This of course depends on the scale of the facility and the available renewable resources. However, companies are increasingly exploring onsite investments that can help provide better protection against electricity price volatility and, with onsite solar, can help shave electricity demand at the most expensive time of the day. In one of his latest blogs Christian Belady, general manager Data Center Services Microsoft, goes one step further. He raised the question  “Why do data centers need to be connected to a dirty, expensive, unreliable electrical grid?” and gave the answer: “They don’t and they don’t want to be either. Integrating a data center directly into the power plant — what we are calling our Data Plant program — will allow a data center to pick its sustainable fuel source and shield itself from grid volatility.”

• Location strategy for renewable energy; The current and projected supply of clean electricity varies significantly between nations and regions, and renewable energy growth is largely determined by the energy and investment policies in those places and how the utilities and electricity markets are structured. Given the scale and long-lived nature of data centers, in order to ensure that the supply of clean energy can keep pace with IT’s rapidly growing demand, companies need to make a corporate commitment to engage in energy policy decisions in regions where they establish operations.

Knowing by measuring, managing by knowing

There has been a notable absence of  CUE reporting under companies. An important issue that has to be solved is that a lot of companies don’t know their carbon emission because they don’t measure it. And if you can not measure it, you can not improve it. Proper measures can only be made if there is a clear understanding of the problem. Therefore operators must begin with monitoring and reporting the carbon intensity of their data centers under the ‘new’ Carbon Utilization Effectiveness (CUE) standard.

UPDATE  May 5th

The Green Grid made an official response to the Greenpeace report in short The Green Grid is stating that:

“Any study or initiative that raises awareness around the important issues of reducing emissions and increasing energy efficiency and sustainability in the data center and cloud computing sectors is something that The Green Grid supports”  and “We welcome the public interest Greenpeace has generated around this report and also encourage the IT industry to think about the complex idea of a ‘green data center’ in a holistic manner. By properly leveraging metrics like PUE, CUE and WUE alongside other models like The Green Grid’s Data Center Maturity Model, organizations can better understand the broader picture of their energy ecosystems and take steps to become more efficient and sustainable both inside and outside of the data center. Similarly, we encourage organizations of all sizes to actively participate in this important conversation by becoming members The Green Grid.”

Power grid crisis: Japanese data centers hit again?

It looks like the feared scenario of last year, that all of Japan’s nuclear power plants would be offline within about one year, is becoming true.

Currently only two of 54 reactors are still operating. Tokyo Electric’s last active reactor is set to go into maintenance on March 26, while Hokkaido Electric’s Tomari No. 3 unit is scheduled to be closed for routine checks in late April or early May. The reactors need to meet new safety checks and No reactor can restart until it passes computer-simulated “stress tests” to confirm it can withstand earthquakes and tsunamis on the scale that wrecked Tepco’s Fukushima Daiichi plant. Then cabinet ministers need to sign off and local governments, by custom although not by law, need to agree.

“A tight supply-demand balance (of electricity) does not affect our judgment on nuclear safety and we are in the process of making that judgment,” Trade Minister Yukio Edano, who holds the energy portfolio, told parliament.

The prospect of being without nuclear power has raised fears of another year with forced power rationing and temporary blackouts in the summer, when air conditioning puts extra strains on supply. It is estimated that the nationwide power supply could fall 7 percent below demand if no reactors are online. Since it is difficult to raise overall supply capacity drastically in the coming months, the government is asking power utilities to come up with a variety of pricing incentives to encourage large users to reduce peak-hour demand, a trade ministry official said.

Infrarati link

Asahi Shimbub link

Der Spiegel link

Japan is shifting its energy mix. Nuclear power previously accounting for 30% of Japan’s power output. Japanese utilities now have ramped up imports and use of coal, oil, and natural gas, while industrial consumers have been more reliant on diesel generators to guarantee reliable energy supply.  The shutdown of nearly all nuclear reactors has forced energy providers to reopen decommissioned oil and gas power plants. Some companies are running their plants partly with their own generators. Overall it is still difficult to meet demand.

Kansai Electric Power Co., which has shut down all the nuclear reactors under its jurisdiction, had difficulties supplying enough power to meet demand. The utility was forced to crank up its remaining power plants, including obsolete thermal power stations, to maximum output to meet winter demand.

Also malfunctions due to aging were frequently reported at such power stations. More than 10 plants across Japan had to be quickly shut down due to emergencies this winter. The trouble at the Shin-Oita thermal power plant of Kyushu Electric Power Co. had a particularly serious impact. The utility barely managed to avoid implementing blackouts in its service area by hooking up to power supplies from five electric utilities in western Japan and Tepco.

Imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by Japan’s 10 regional utilities have increased 39 percent in January, relative to the year prior, while imports of fuel oil and crude oil both nearly tripled. This gives is a growing concern over whether Japan can ensure a stable supply of the fuel. While the country has a 200-day crude oil reserve, it has only enough LNG for two to three weeks of power generation. As a result of soaring power generation costs, Tepco will raise its electricity charges from April. If the dependence on thermal power generation continues, other electric utilities could very likely follow suit.

The Breaktrough link 1

The Breaktrough link 2

Daily Yomiuri link

The current energy crisis has also an profound effect on the carbon emission. Japan, the world’s fifth-largest carbon emitter, is backtracking on the introduction of a carbon price. A move by the Japanese government to put a price on carbon at this point would be economically and politically impossible in Japan today, according to senior Japanese foreign affairs officials in Tokyo. The commitment made earlier with the election of the prime minister  in 2009 to reduce emissions by 25 per cent is no longer realistic.

The Australian link

Last year summer all facilities that consume more than 500kWh were ordered to reduce their peak power usage by 15 percent from a year earlier. Data centers operators have fought the cap and the idea of rolling blackouts with some success. It is still uncertain if the Japan Data Center Council (JDCC) will be as successful as last year. What is certain is that much pressure will be put on data centers in trying to find ways to cope with long-term power shortages and the price hikes that result.

Infarati link

Datacenter Dynamics Amsterdam 2011 grand final: sustainability and cloud computing

 This week I attended (and was chair of one of the tracks) of the DatacenterDynamics conference in Amsterdam. This year the conference program set up was along three themes, Design, Build & Operate, Outsourcing Decisions and IT Optimization.

During the day a wide range of cases and technologies were presented. And at the end of the day there was a grand final with a very interesting panel discussion led by John Abbott, founder & chief Analyst of the 451 Group and Harkeeret Singh (Thomson Ruters/Green Grid), Tom Dowdall (Greenpeace), Hans Timmerman (EMC/EuroCloud Netherlands) and Jan Wiersma  (Evo Switch/Data Center Pulse) as participants.

In the beginning some arguments were exchanged about how green cloud computing really is. Soon the focus shifted to a discussion about the relation between the electrical energy infrastructure and the IT infrastructure and how efficient it is to use mega data centers.

Currently data centers are constructed on the intersection of the electrical energy infrastructure and the network (data) infrastructure. The observation was made that based on technological developments, the principle of economy of scale and the current set up of the electrical energy infrastructure this leads to the building of mega data centers.

This development has also a downside, the example was given that for the city of Amsterdam 10% of the energy consumption is done by data centers, and in the vicinity of airport Schiphol/Amsterdam it is even 25%. The result of this is that there will be energy supply issues for the next decade for the Amsterdam region.

As a side step. In other parts of the world there are even certain critical locations, also known as Critical Areas for Transmission Congestion, were there is insufficient capacity to meet the demand at peak periods (DOE, “National Electric Transmission Congestion Study.”, 2006). And don’t forget that we also have to take into account that the energy loss in the power grid, that is from primary energy source to the actual delivery of electrical power at the data center, is almost 70% (around 67% power plant conversion loss and 8-10% transmission grid loss). Indirect this mega data centers are part of this 70% energy loss in the power grid.

The discussion about the developments in the data center industry at first followed the same line of reasoning as in the book “The Big Switch” by Nicholas Carr.

Carr makes a historical analysis to build the idea that the data centers / Internet is following the same developmental path as electric power did 100 years ago. At that time companies stopped generating their own power and plugged into the newly built electric grid that was fed with electric energy by huge generic power plants. The big switch is between today’s proprietary corporate data centers to what Carr calls the world wide computer, basically the cloud with some huge generic data centers that provides web services that will be as ubiquitous, networked and shared as electricity now is. This modern cloud computing infrastructure is following the same structure as the electricity infrastructure: the plant (data center), transmission network (Internet) and distribution networks (MAN, (W)LAN) to give process power and storage capacity to all kind of end-devices.

But where Carr stops using this analogy the panel went one step beyond. Here in the panel discussion the comparison was made with current developments in the electrical energy infrastructure: local power generation based on alternative energy sources such as wind and solar energy. Local power generation that, with improvements of the current technology, could even lead to local energy self sufficiency. Using this as an analogy another data center industry development, or next step or next phase, was envisioned.

Thus instead of relying only on centralized mega data centers another solution, another paradigm is possible in the nearby future that is much more focussing on an intelligent distributed network of localized micro data centers who are energy self sufficient.

For the current moment with the trend of consolidation of data centers to mega data centers, based on the thriving force of economy of scale, the emphasis should be made on data center efficiency and the usage of renewable energy. Although the panel revered to the Jevons paradox, increases in the efficiency of using a resource tends to increase the usage of that resource, the statement also was made that we should appreciate that every kilowatt that isn’t used also doesn’t have to be generated. Data center efficiency is not only about energy efficiency it is also about water usage, e-waste handling. The panel agreed that if you talk about efficiency, a holistic (not energy usage only), cradle to cradle approach should be used.

Apart from efficiency improvements, data center providers should also think about how they can reduce carbon emissions by powering data centers from low-carbon electricity sources, such as hydropower or wind energy. The panel discussed the ‘quality’ of the electrical energy that is being used in data centers. How to compare energy efficiency if this efficiency is reached by using nonrenewable energy resources? Currently most of the data centers providers don’t disclose what kind of energy resources they are using. According to the panel one of the issues is that at the current moment there are hardly independent resources about the composition of the electrical energy that is being delivered. It was stated that data center providers could take a much more pro active attitude in this issue by asking the power suppliers to give insight in there energy resource investment policy (renewable/nonrenewable) and take there answers into account when choosing a power supplier for their data centers.

All agreed that sustainability is an import issue for the data center industry. A pro active attitude of the data center industry in combination with a government that step up to support the sustainability initiatives of this industry (by creating the right incentives) can push and accelerate the power suppliers activities on sustainability and usage of renewable energy resources.