Will the UK's looming energy shortages send cloud computing overseas?

In just a few years time, most of the UK's coal, oil and nuclear power stations will be closed - leaving the UK perilously close to brownouts

When the government unveiled its plans for coping with the shutdown of almost all the UK's aging coal, oil and nuclear power stations, what stood out wasn't simply how little spare capacity the UK would have left - if any - but the contingency plan that it claimed would make sure that no one will be left in the dark.

According to the energy regulator Ofgem, the margin between total supply and demand will fall to between two and five per cent some time in 2015 or 2016. "This means that the probability of a supply disruption increases from one in 47 years now to around one in 12 years," warned Ofgem. As a result, just one particularly cold winter could be all it takes to tip the UK over the edge.

Should brownouts loom, according to the plans, the government will simply lean on the many public-sector organisations that keep diesel generators for emergency backup and ask them to crank them up to contribute much-needed power to the grid.

In return, they will be paid 12 times the rate that conventional power stations are currently paid for their output.

Leaving aside the absurdity of closing power stations on environmental grounds to run diesel generators instead, or whether the public sector's backup generators are actually up to the task, what potential impact could the UK's looming electricity crunch have on the data centre industry?
"Two per cent is a very slim margin," says Cyrille Brisson, EMEA business unit manager at $16bn power management company Eaton Corporation. "It means that it will be almost impossible to avoid shutdowns when you have scheduled maintenance," he warns.

Planned or unplanned?
Brisson therefore believes that unless the programme of power-station closures is partially reversed, the UK will have to adopt one of two strategies. "There's the ‘Californian way', in which you just let brownouts happen, or you can do it in the Japanese way," he says.

The trouble with the Californian approach is that brownouts can be unpredictable and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) don't necessarily last long. Backup power therefore needs to be cranked up quickly.

In contrast, in Japan, says Brisson, sectors considered the least important to the national economy in the post-Fukushima disaster power shortages were ordered to shutdown when it looked like demand was about to outstrip supply - and data centres were initially on that list.

However, the Japanese government relented when the implications of shutting down data centres were spelt out - effectively, Japan would be cut off from the internet and unable to conduct business.

The Japanese approach is not very different from the one adopted in the UK during the three-day week in the 1970s. Then, industry was ordered to be shut down with the threat of stiff fines for any business found flouting the rules.

Manufacturers of the time had to make emergency purchases of diesel generators to cut downtime. But backup generators on their own are not enough for datacentres, especially when they are faced with a prolonged brownout.

They also need voltage stabilisation to safeguard equipment, and most diesel backup generators are neither designed nor intended to be run 24/7. Then there is the small issue of exhaust, with diesel notorious for the carcinogenic "quality" of its exhaust gases.

Organisations will therefore first need to reduce their power consumption as far as possible, by changing the settings on air conditioners and - well in advance - replacing light fittings with LEDs and other energy-efficient technologies.

As a result, it may also, believes Brisson, accelerate the trend towards larger data centres, which can more easily afford such investments, and which will be newer and able to adopt more energy efficient cooling systems.

In addition, locations outside the UK may become more attractive - especially in countries that are less at the mercy of brownouts and, consequently, wildly fluctuating fuel prices. For example, Switzerland, says Brisson, takes advantage of dirt-cheap night-time prices for French power by using it to pump water into dams, which can be released to generate similarly cheap hydro-power during the day. Norway, likewise, also enjoys the benefit of copious supplies of hydro-power and is self-sufficient in oil and gas.

The gathering storm
But the growing threat of power shortages in the UK comes at a time of an unprecedented data centre building boom across the country - part of a global boom as independent operators look to take advantage of the corporate shift to cloud computing.

The irony, if you could call it that, is that the same politicians that no doubt support the high-value jobs created by cloud computing will also have done little for two decades to address the looming power shortages that could undermine it and drive the industry offshore.

Computing 's Data Centre Summit will take place at the Tower Bridge Hilton in London on 24th September 2013. For details on how to register as a delegate, or for speaking and sponsorship opportunities, please visit: http://www.computingsummit.com/datacentre