Question: Why would (or wouldn't) your company switch your datacenter loads to generator (or other off-mains) power sources, if you had the capability and/or capacity?
1. Due to price caps, it costs me less to take electricity from PG&E (which, because I run a datacenter 24x7, I don't take with time-of-use metering) than it does to run my generator on diesel. Especially so if I factor in the non-fuel costs of operation. 2. My permit from the local air quality management district restricts me to operation when the utility is offline plus a total of 60 hours per year for all testing. I would need to apply for a permit for a different type of operation (voluntary load shedding, peak shaving, or prime generation) and for that, a full environmental impact report is required. Given #1, it isn't worth my trouble. (And my AQMD is the Monterey Bay AQMD... I can't even imagine the pain of applying in the Los Angeles area) 3. Other than as a PR effort, this doesn't make as much sense as having some industry which uses much more power than the Internet data center industry do this. Perhaps an industry which can easily move their peak load to a different hour of the day. Of course, if we had *real* deregulation, my price for power as a commercial user would closely reflect the utility's cost for power, and they might even charge me differently by time of use whether or not I wanted that... then the cost equation changes for item 1, and I'd have an incentive to go look at the true costs of item 2. -matthew kaufman Tycho Networks/DSL.net matthew@tycho.net