Late last year I participated in an EUCI forum on data centers in San Francisco, and thought I'd do a brief post on each of the four presentations I delivered over the day-and-a-half session. Check out EUCI - they offer a robust series of programs and sessions for the energy industry.
We kicked off the event with an hour-and-a-half overview of emerging trends in the market from KC Mares, President of Megawatt Consulting. I haven't managed to find a copy of the slide deck - it would be well-worth getting a hold of it if you can.
My first section was billed as a primer on utility rates as they apply to data centers, and I jumped back and forth between the viewpoint of data center operators and the utilities that serve them, as both groups were pretty evenly represented in the audience.
The upshot is that all of the price signals that utilities try to send to customers don't make it through to decision makers at data centers, and that most of those signals are moot in any event as data centers have essentially unitary load factors.
Despite this, for operators of utility-scale data centers, and for sophisticated utilities, there are opportunities around the margins, for demand response, renewable supply options, and attracting data center development.
Here's a copy of the presentation deck:
Download EUCI Pres 1 Utility Rates
Happy to field questions or comments!
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