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Commentary High-tech power: Grow your own, not the grid

As rolling blackouts threaten power shut-offs to millions of individuals, families and businesses, Californians are turning to everything from candles to mini-generators to help keep the lights on.

But to keep from ever coming between a plug and hard place again, corporate leaders and public officials should learn from this dark winter of 2001 and seize on distributed generation, the name given to locating power plants at the user’s premises.

Apart from the unanticipated and unintended consequences of deregulation, the Internet and related technology-based businesses that have driven prosperity levels to new heights in California and across the nation have birthed an energy glutton.

According to one report, six Silicon Valley data centers run by Exodus Communications, a leading Internet hosting and network management firm, together draw more than one-quarter of the region’s power capacity. A senior official for Silicon Valley Power recently estimated the utility’s load could double in the coming 24 to 36 months, with four-fifths of that demand coming from new data centers.

To the relief of ratepayers, shareholders and businesses, distributed generation presents a “short wire” solution that will not require massive public or private investment. Ultimately, distributed generation (also known as co-generation) can feed the tech giant’s appetite in ways that are easier, cheaper, more efficient and far less risky to the environment than cooking up a feast of new central generating plants.

Use It, Pay For It

Perhaps most important to the greatest number of people is that on-site primary power systems would enable public utilities to deliver greater capacity to their residential and small-business customers. In a nutshell, those who use the power will pay for it, and they will bear the financial responsibility for the capital costs of its development.

At the same time, however, businesses would enjoy access to economical, high-quality power. Chip-maker Intel Corp., the state’s second-biggest company by market value, recently went on record as saying it won’t expand in California unless its power needs can be reliably met.

A distributed generation solution would bring watts and volts under the company’s direct control and provide levels of availability (another way to measure “uptime”) higher than ever possible from the grid , up to 99.9999 percent availability, in fact.

High-tech manufacturing and software development companies like Intel face much more financial risk from outages and brownouts than traditional businesses because power fluctuations measured in microseconds can bring computers and other sensitive systems to a crashing halt, costing millions due to downtime.

Scalable Solutions

Moreover, distributed generation solutions are scalable to meet specific business needs. Design options range from “ultra-green” fuel cell-powered systems that can serve relatively small consumers of computer-grade electricity, to clean, gas turbine-powered solutions for data center installations that typically require as much as 10 megawatts of power (equivalent to the energy use of about 10,000 homes).

Clearly, in California and other areas of high-tech concentration such as Texas, Washington and Massachusetts, the potential economic cost of insufficient power capacity goes beyond the immediate impact on ratepayers and utility shareholders. There is no way to turn back the clock when it comes to energy consumption.

Internet power demand, most commentators seem to agree, is growing at a 4 percent compounded annual rate. If the nation’s high-tech regions seriously want to preserve their economic base, they must think outside the box and off the grid.

“Growing the grid” is a 20th-century solution to a 21st-century dilemma. It’s time everyone caught up with the calendar. Through a judicious combination of tax breaks and other incentives, regulatory flexibility and fast-tracking with permits and licenses, and a big-picture view that extends beyond the boundaries of individual neighborhoods and towns, the private and public sectors together can successfully encourage businesses to grow their own power.

Cratty is a charter member of the Cogeneration Institute and chief technology officer of Sure Power Corp., a Connecticut-based developer of power systems.

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