How much does power go for nowadays ?

Tue Aug 30 12:13:26 PDT 2005

Jim Hickstein wrote:
>>selling us the power at a loss if they are paying that PG&E tarif, the other
>>datacenter (I doubled the amount of power we would draw to cover the power
>>needed for cooling), it was pretty much that PG&E tarif.
> 
> 
> Surely a co-lo adds value in the form of a UPS, gen-set, etc., even if these
> things didn't consume any more power on their own.  (OK, an automatic
> transfer switch doesn't dissipate a lot of power, but a UPS sure does.)  I
> would expect to pay a fair bit more than the PG&E kilowatt-hour charge.
> 
> Are co-lo's doing any sort of voluntary load-shedding, or time-sensitive
> billing, I wonder, to reduce their power cost?  (Not that they really have
> much room to maneuver.)

There is also the fact that every time you go through a transformer, 
UPS, battery set, etc. there is some effeciceny and loss that you have 
to build into the price.  What PG&E charges is what goes into the 
building.  What you get at your server may mean that another 25% or more 
was wasted as heat before it even got to you.

Tim