{"id":626,"date":"2009-02-17T13:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-17T13:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/?p=626"},"modified":"2009-02-17T13:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-17T13:17:00","slug":"a-different-point-of-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/2009\/02\/17\/a-different-point-of-view\/","title":{"rendered":"A different point of view"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saving money in the Data Center on energy costs, seems to be something just about all of our clients want to do. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal<\/a> had an article that pointed out how radically different an energy producing country’s administration feels about alternative power generation and resource usage, as compared to our Administration’s point of view.<\/p>\n

Currently, we think of power outages as incidents, not long term events. But what if energy is curtailed for the long term?<\/p>\n

The article …<\/a>
“Saudi Arabia Oil Minister Ali Naimi<\/span> lobbed a verbal salvo in the crude vs. renewables<\/span> scuffle. In a speech to oil executives in Houston, he warned that promoting the growth of renewable fuels too quickly could create a \u201cnightmare scenario\u201d \u2013 too little investment in oil, while renewables<\/span> aren<\/span>\u2019t yet ready to pick up the slack.<\/span><\/p>\n

His remarks seemed aimed at officials in Washington D.C. and particularly members of President Barack Obama\u2019s administration. His speech comes at a time when the new Obama administration embarks on an ambitious path to steer the country\u2019s energy policy away from fossil fuels. President Obama was to instate a national renewable electricity mandate and a carbon cap-and-trade system this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe must be mindful that efforts to rapidly promote alternatives could have a \u2018chilling effect\u2019 on investment in the oil sector,\u201d he said at the Cambridge Energy Research Associates oil conference, according to his prepared remarks. \u201cA nightmare scenario would be created if alternative energy supplies fail to meet overly optimistic expectations, while traditional energy suppliers scale back investment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That echoes an argument made last summer by a Dutch think tank\u2013basically, that oil-producing nations are just as concerned about \u201csecurity of demand\u201d as consumer countries are about \u201csecurity of supply.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Naimi<\/span>\u2019s warning against ramping<\/span> up investments and expectations in renewable energy comes at a time when OPEC members are feeling the financial pain of low crude oil prices.<\/span>
Mr. Naimi<\/span>, the longtime oil minister for Saudi Arabia, is one of the most influential voices in the oil world. But he speaks as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has slashed output in an effort to cut supplies and keep prices from falling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, Mr. Naimi<\/span> acknowledged that the world was likely headed towards a transition away from fossil fuels. But he said it wasn<\/span>\u2019t clear which fuels or technologies would be able to gain the scale and economics needed to replace crude oil.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cost of replacing the current \u201chighly efficient and economical\u201d energy infrastructure with alternatives would be \u201cprohibitive\u201d in the short term. \u201cA prudent approach demands we recognize that the massive scale of the global energy system makes rapid change costly and impractical,\u201d he said.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The article led me to ask some questions:<\/p>\n

1) What happens to data center costs and up time guarantees if we run into a power crisis?
2) How do we decide which systems are critical in a completely integrated network?
3) Do we have a Disaster Prevention plan that includes provisions for which systems are critical if we only are allocated 80% of the power consumption we used last year?
4) Which servers and appliances can be turned off and are not critical?
5) How often are you going to do a backup and will we have the power to complete it?
6) How long can our UPS and generators realistically provide the extra power we need?
7) What will this do to our bottom line costs of operations?<\/p>\n

** linked to by Simon Sharwood<\/a> – Thank you.<\/p>\n

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Saving money in the Data Center on energy costs, seems to be something just about all of our clients want to do. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an article that pointed out how radically different an energy producing country’s administration … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zerowait.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}