Power to the People

Have you got power? Do you know where your power comes from? How long can you survive without power? Many companies in Kent are asking these questions as they face a third day without electricity. Up to 100,000 homes and businesses have been left without power after a suspected vandal attack on an electricity substation in Dartford. Many businesses have had to close as they cannot function without power and only facilities with backup power generation have been able to continue their operations as usual.

For those who need to keep their businesses going, there has been a huge demand for generators and fuel. EDF who own the substation have been trying to restore power and have been providing backup power in 3 hour long, rotated sessions where possible. A number of Data Centres in the area who do not have generators on site have been paying higher than usual prices to source power at short notice. They are starting to realise how fragile the national grid is in the UK and how there is an increasing need for standby generators with present and expected, future power problems.

So do you know where your Data Centre gets its power? Do you have diverse feeds to maintain resilience? In a worst case scenario, how long could your facility survive without mains power and without generator fuel? For the majority of Data Centres with standby generators, no more than 24 hours worth of fuel is kept on site. According to the Uptime Institutes tiering standards, a tier 4 facility is only required to have 4 days of fuel while a Tier 3 only 3. What happens if fuel trucks cannot get to your facility to refill the tanks? Some Data Centres claim to hold enough fuel for 90 days of normal operation. This may seem very expensive and sound like overkill, but talks of London running out of power in the near future and past fuel price strikes are leading business continuity experts to recommend larger fuel tanks to minimise potential impact on critical business systems. How vital are your systems and how long could your facility survive?

Migration Solutions are a specialist Data Centre consultancy focusing on design, build, operation and migration of facilities throughout the UK and Europe. Contact us now for advice on how to make your Data Centre or Computer Room more resilient for the future at www.migrationsolutions.com

How good is wind?

The Scottish government has officially switched on the largest onshore wind farm in Europe. The site on Eaglesham Moor, which takes up an area the size of central Glasgow, has 140 turbines which will power 250,000 homes. The owners, ScottishPower Renewables, have been given further permission to increase the site by 25% to 176 turbines which would have the ability to produce 452MW of power. There are also discussions in place to build an 1800MW offshore wind farm in the west of Scotland. To put this into perspective, 452MW is about 1% of the UK’s electricity consumption, and 1800 MW is about 4.5%.

Data centres in the UK have been said to use around 4% of all power used in the UK. If the offshore wind farm in Scotland gets the go-ahead, these two sites combined would produce enough power for every data centre in the UK. The Whitelee wind farm takes up an area of 55 square kilometres and the UK would require 600 of these to meet its energy policy by 2050, or an area the size of Wales.

The question on many people’s lips is, will energy prices fall as a result of this renewable energy? In America, many IT companies base their data centres around the Colorado River, where hydroelectric power is created in huge volumes and is sold back to the public at a relatively low rate. The electricity prices in Colorado have risen 63% from 2002-2008, this new energy may be clean, but who can be sure how it will affect the price we pay in the UK?

Migration Solutions are a specialist data centre consultancy who recently won Information Age's Data Centre Innovation award for ERA, their environmental report and assessment. ERA takes a 360 degree look at your data centre and then suggests areas that you could improve on and could help save the environment while saving you money. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com