Together, microprocessors and the equipment they control have helped stimulate growth in the demand for electricity well beyond previous expectations. Information technology is the fastest growing market for electricity and now accounts for 10-13% of the electrical energy consumed in the U.S.
* Given the growth in the Internet’s direct and indirect usage of electricity, the equivalent of 30%-50% of today’s US power production may be needed to serve the needs of the booming digital society within the next decade or two.
* Power demand in Silicon Valley is indicative of the future of the digital society. For example, total demand growth in the valley is currently running at about 5%/year, much of it due to high-tech expansion. This is more than twice the national average. It is quickly absorbing capacity margins for both generation and power delivery are racing well ahead of capital spending by utilities.
* This demand growth is coming primarily from new end-users; particularly data centers and co-location facility providers, data storage providers, cellular, PCS and radio tower operators, and the optical components industry.
As recently as the 1970s, electricity accounted for only 25% of the energy consumption in the industrialized nations. By 2000 it had risen to more than 37%. During the next 25 years, electricity is likely to grow to provide more than 50% of the energy consumed in these nations, and even more if electrified transportation takes hold.
In doing so, energy efficiency will also continue to grow with less and less energy needed to power the economy. What is equally important, however, is how society will transform its use of electricity in the new millennium. Computers, the Internet, advanced automation, smart houses, critical care equipment, fiber optic communications, digital household appliances, e-commerce companies, wireless phone systems, the list of digital technologies goes on. Appliances and automated processes, linked via telecommunications services, will control energy purchases, metering, environmental control, lighting, and security, etc. Consumers will use the Internet economy to connect directly with energy markets, while buying and paying via electronic commerce.
This emerging Internet economy depends upon a server and fiber-optic based network whose power demands necessitate an extremely high level of reliability and quality. The growth in Internet-based commerce fundamentally depends on the reliability of its power supply backbone.
What is digital-quality power? Realistically speaking, most of the electricity delivered in the US has a reliability of about 99.9% (based on average annual outage duration), with a variety of disturbances which reduce overall quality to something less. That is not good enough for a digital society. Interruptions and disturbances measuring less than one cycle (less than 1/60th of one second) are enough to crash servers, computers, intensive care and life support machines, automated equipment, and other microprocessor-based devices.
For example, power disturbances around the world cause more than 17,000 computer disruptions every second, ranging from annoying frozen cursors to serious disruptions of equipment and products. Proliferation of digital technology raises two challenges for those who must supply the necessary electric power – quality as well as quantity. On an annual basis, that means electricity must be available to the microprocessor at least 99.9999999% of the time – “9-nines reliability” as it’s sometimes called. Many of the measures required to achieve 9-nines entail devices that are on the customer’s side of the meter, but linked in seamless fashion to the power supply system.
Economics is the primary driver. Information technology companies already are taking steps to ensure their own supply of ultra-high-quality electrical power. Oracle Corp., for example, has built their own substation, pointing out that their power costs could triple and not impact their product cost, whereas an outage carries heavy and growing costs. An Oracle spokesperson brought the point home. “What is self-sufficiency (to ensure power quality) worth to us? Millions of dollars per hour. It is so important that you can’t calculate the value to us and our customers.” Another sign of the need for digital-quality power is rapid growth of the power conditioning industry.
Bank of America Securities recently issued a report showing the demand for Internet quality power increasing at a compound rate of 17%/year through at least 2010, roughly in line with shipments of high-end servers.
Coupled to this is an emerging “energy technology” industry, focused on the use of power conditioning, uninterruptible power systems (UPS) based on battery storage, and distributed power resources that can provide ultra-high-quality power for the Internet. This “silicon power plant” industry is expected to grow from a few billion dollars in sales today to $50 billion/year by 2005, to $100 billion/year by 2010.
Part I: Transformative ERA of Digital Society and Power Requirements
About FrankPicini
Connect with Us