The lights may go out in data centres, if new power stations are
not built to replace those that are being decommissioned.
A report from
Capgemini
has found that the UK risks major power outages. Electricity output
has fallen by 2.2% to its lowest level in 10 years - placing the UK
at risk of power shortages in the near future unless more stations
are built.
However, power companies may be under pressure not to invest in
major projects such as building new power stations now, due to the
current economic climate, Alistair Green, Energy and Utility,
senior consultant at Capgemini warned.
Data centres are large users of electricity. Clients of analyst
firm
Gartner
based in the South East have already expressed concerns that the
2012 London Olympics will strain the National Grid. This could
get worse, unless power stations are replaced. Gartner
vice-president Rakesh Kumar, said, "Businesses are angry they may
need to buy expensive diesel generators for back-up power because
the energy companies cannot guarantee supply."
Businesses that run resilient servers often run so-called "n+1"
configurations, where they provide one extra set of servers/IT
infrastructure to cope with a single major failure. Some experts
believe that if power glitches and outages become a persistent
problem, data centre managers may need to duplicate their data
centres (ie n+n), which requires twice as much IT infrastructure,
costly considerably more to run.
Some of the biggest operators are looking at radical ways to
lower electricity consumption, which reduces the risk of downtime
caused by electricity supply problems. Last year
Google
launched an initiative through an internal engineering department
to produce one gigawatt of electricity using renewable energy at a
lower cost than using electricity from coal power stations on the
electricity grid.
Investment Bank Morgan Stanley also had plans to build an
offshore data centre located in Scotland's Pentland Firth,
which separates the Orkney Islands from the Scottish mainland,