I enjoyed attending the Uptime Symposium last week in New York City, and will post some thoughts and reactions throughout this week.
In the meantime, I had lots of requests for copies of my presentation deck "The Carbon Content of Power: A Primer for Data Center Managers":
While the content did draw some good discussion, and I did get positive feedback, I must apologize for delivery that was not up to my standards.
In any event, the key messages are that the information sources for carbon content of utility-delivered power are very rudimentary - you should be sure to drill down to the level of your specific utility provider to get a good conversion factor.
Further, because data centers have essentially a unity load factor, managers are likely to overstate the carbon footprint of their facilities because the carbon content of electricity can be heavily time dependent.
If you are a consulting client of mine and would like to learn more, contact me for a copy of my latest white paper on this subject.
Mark,
I think you're being a bit hard on yourself with regards to the delivery. From my perspective, and given your time constraints, I thought it was valuable. As I'm sure you see on a daily basis, this subject is brand new to a lot of people in the US, and I expect to see a lot more questions coming your way (and mine as an analyst) on the subject of carbon as it relates to data centers.
Posted by: Mrdatacenter | 05/24/2010 at 08:45 AM