Computer world carries an article on how Data centers face increased costs on account of utility costs. Below are excerpts from the article.

In Connecticut, for instance, rates for commercial and residential customers rose this month by more than 17% -- and are slated to go up again by another 22.4% in April.

"Undoubtedly, I don't care where you go, the price of generating electricity has gone through the roof because for the most part it uses fossil fuels," said Beryl Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control in New Britain. "There wasn't anything we could do on this one."

Electricity costs may prompt some IT shops to become more aggressive about energy conservation and start adopting systems that use low-power chips and Computerworld carries an article on hovariable-speed motors. But it's unlikely to lead to a relocation of data centers to regions where power is less expensive, according to three data center managers.

Baltimore-based Thomson Prometric, a testing and assessment services firm that is part of The Thomson Corp., is in the process of relocating its data center. But the new one will be located just three miles from the existing facility because the company didn't want to lose its employees, said Bob Williams, who runs the data centers.

The monthly electric bill to run Thomson's 1,000-server data center is about $15,000. And while Williams is concerned about rate increases that could follow state deregulation efforts and the recent purchase of the main Baltimore utility by a larger provider, Juno, Fla.-based Constellation Energy Group Inc., he said other issues, such as reliability, are more important.

"The [electricity] cost is one thing," said Williams, "but an outage is devastating and will cost me a lot more than the increase in energy costs."

Source: ComputerWorldPrashanth RaiTag(s):data+center