Secret to saving electricity costs in Bay Area Data Centers, MOVE!!!

I am back in the bay area and it is amazing the number of server hugging executive decision makers want to have their IT equipment within driving distance.  They have driven up the price of colocation space in the bay area, and ironically the colocation companies don’t want you to be energy efficient, they want you to be energy hogs.  You ever wonder why you are stuck not being to do simple things in colocation space like hot and cold aisles.

What do you do to save energy costs?  MOVE out of the bay area!!!

You look at Google, Apple, and Facebook to reduce costs and scale they move out of the bay area.

Here is a case in point of how the server hugging behavior blinds people to save money.

Power costs in the Bay Area from PG&E is about $0.13 – 0.14 kW.  Silicon Valley Power can save you a few cents, but you are paying over ten cents a kW.  You can go to Pacific Northwest or East in central US and get below five cents a kilowatt.  If you don’t want to move out of state, closer to the bay area you can go to Sacramento and get eight cents a kW.

If you are going to move you need connectivity.  It is one of the reasons you are in the bay area.  Advanced Data Centers is an example we’ll use in Sacramento.

Connectivity

CARRIER NEUTRAL

McClellan Park is strategically located to leverage the multitude of carriers providing both wavelength (metro and long-haul) and traditional data/telecommunications services. ADC is committed to maintaining carrier neutrality and diverse options for its client’s connectivity requirements. Tenants will have direct access to the following carriers and service providers: 360, AT&T, Global Crossing, Level3, O1 Communications, Qwest, Sprint, Surewest, Time Warner Telecom, Verizon Business, and XO.

Power and efficiency

LEED© PLATINUM

USGBC LEED© Platinum pre-certification.

GREEN DATA CENTER DESIGN

By utilizing energy efficiency strategies such as Air Side Economizers, Hot/Cold Isle and Highly Efficient Chiller and Fan systems, ADC uses 38% less overall energy (to operate the same Critical Load) as industry standard data centers according to the 2003 LBNL Data Center Benchmarking Study. This reduces both the burden on the environment and utility grid, while lowering the total cost of data center ownership.

Cleaner power

GREEN POWER

The ADC McClellan Park data center is served by SMUD, one of the nation's "greenest" utility districts. SMUD’s 2009 Power Mix includes 19% eligible renewable energy (biomass, geothermal, wind, solar), 20% hydroelectric and 60% natural gas. Additionally, customers may elect to receive 100% renewable power under SMUD's Greenergy® program.

And oh by the way what all the big boys get moving out of state is sales tax exemption.  You can get it at McClellan AFD as well.

Being located on a former Air Force Base, LAMBRA, an acronym for "Local Agency Military Base Recovery Area", allows our customers to claim a credit equal to the sales or use tax paid or incurred to purchase up to $20 million of qualified property. Qualified property includes high technology equipment, such as computers and electronic processing equipment.

Now, moving may seem expensive, but it is often the easiest way to save money and be more efficient.

Think about moving out of the bay area to save energy and costs.  All the big data center players are.

Comments

[tinkthank]

Too bad that any cost savings that ADC offers are negated by transit costs to get your data back to the peering points in the bay area. It's a non starter for any company that needs tens of gigabits per megawatt. I wish that wasn't the case.

[Chris Escher]

tinkthank,

We did the math to address your point. Assuming 2MW draw of total power, below represents monthly/yearly electrical bill costs compared to 10G wave costs to get back to the peering points in the Bay Area:

• ADC/SMUD ($0.79/kWh) = $113k/month or $1.365 million/year• Santa Clara/SVP ($.095/kWh) = $136k/month or $1.641 million/year• PG&E ($0.13/kWh) = $187k/month or $2.246 million/year

10G waves are available for under $6k/month or $72k per year.

Therefore, electrical bill savings ALONE of ~$200,000 per year (SVP) or ~$800,000 per year (PG&E), makes transit costs irrelevant.

Also, there is no CA state sales tax on IT equipment used at our site.

[Hooked]

That appears to me to be an overstatement of the facts. Depending on qty and term 10G backhaul to the Bay area should run between $3-5k/mo. So with out bending peoples minds around all the variables in the equation I'd say that you'd have to be doing well over 100G's of traffic with your 1000kW of power to get even close to leveling the power playing field.

[Corelink Data Centers: Colocat]

Thanks for the interesting and informative post. I look forward to more in the future.

[Commercial Electricity]

There are two ways to save money on your electricity bills:

(1) use less electricity by following some of the tips already mentioned above (this is also good for the environment as it reduces your carbon footprint); and

(2) choose an electricity supplier that charges you less for the electricity you actually use. I have found an Australian comparison site that helps you to find cheaper electricity prices – take a look at