Greg A. Woods Sent: Friday, August 04, 2000 7:58 AM
[ On Friday, August 4, 2000 at 12:19:05 (+0100), Alex Bligh wrote: ]
Subject: Re: California electric power on the ragged edge
Larger customers (data centers) can indeed use separate transmission arrangements if appropriate. The subway system here does deals power deals in London with dig (it self generates too), and so do various other slightly unexpected utilities.
Would it make sense for a datacentre in Sunny Calif. to become its own generating facility and of course to resell its excess power back to the grid? Burning diesel to generate electricity is obviously not cost effective nor is it environmentally friendly when done in any concentration, but perhaps a sufficiently large bank of solar panels and some wind power on the roof too, as well as a big enough bank of batteries would allow someone to buy only cheap power overnight to top up the batteries while the sun doesn't shine, selling excess generation capacity back to the grid when the sun shines bright while the wind blows! I don't know what the economics of building a battery bank that big are though, not to mention the zoning regulations on having big sun and wind collectors might be....
Wouldn't work. Many have the large battery packs in their UPS systems. However, every Kwh you sell back reduces your power-fail reserves by that same amount. You would actually have to over-build reserve capacity in order to do this and still survive a power outage. Wind and solar power options are geo-physically dependent. In the Altamount pass, the windmills don't turn all the time and they use huge tracts of acreage. In the Silly-cone valley, most of them wouldn't run at all, ever. By the same token solar panels, for a data center, eat up much more square footage than is available (although covering every roof-top with solar panels might really add credence to the name "Silicon Valley"). In most other parts of the country, they have far too many cloudy hours, reducing duty-cycles substantially. There is also the issue of remembering what the core business is and avoiding dilution of efforts.