Data Centers aren’t anything special.

Normal business now need to defend themselves from the power systems just as data centers do.

Long time readers know that I consider that power companies and utilities commissions over-estimate power reliability by focusing on the presence of power and not on the quality of power. I often note that my home, halfway between a major research university and a nuclear plant suffers multiple outages a month, outages long enough to require that I reset all the devices in the house, whether microwave, DVD player, or alarm clock. This probably has something to do with the frequency with which I must replace home electronics. Yet homes are “adequately supplied” with power.

On the other side is the data center. Data centers have long acknowledged that utility power is neither good enough nor reliable enough for their purposes. Data centers use multiple strategies for on-site energy storage, on-site energy generation, and on-site energy conditioning to protect themselves from the product supplied over the power grid.

Non high-tech businesses are considered as something more similar to the home than to the data center. They were not worth protecting in the way data centers are protected.

Two weeks ago, some friends open up a bakery and sweet shop in Chapel Hill. Sugarland is an all-natural bakery and gelato shop. Its business equipment is kitchen equipment and retail refrigeration. It seemed the worst problem they were going to have was keeping up with the swarms of students that found them as soon as they opened, before their staff was all trained. Doc and Katrina were exhausted, but pleased. The snacks were delicious. Rush hour warm cookie time was a success.

Last Sunday a wind storm came through the southeast. In town power would flicker, then flicker again. One would think that this business would be mostly unaffected, not much different from the businesses the grid was designed for in the 1950’s.

Modern ovens, however, have computer systems the run them, computers that reset with each flicker. Modern gelato machines have processors that stop when the power dims a little. The cash register is, of course, a high touch system for inventory control and minimal staff training, until its database corrupts.

I went by Sugarland on Sunday as Katrina threw out 250 cupcakes that deflated when the oven re-set. She did not dare start more cakes for the morning until she knew the power would be reliable. Doc had given up on trying getting fresh gelato out to the waiting lines. Neither knew what to prep that night to prepare for the early morning baking on Monday.

The absolute shut-down and loss of business for flickering power in a modern retail bakery is as big a hit as in any data center. Bakers, too, need to defend themselves from what comes over the power line with

Monday’s short stock is now over. The power has been adequate this week. The shelves are stocked again. But I will no longer consider data centers as having special needs; merely needs that are better recognized.

I think I will head downtown now – I hear the grapefruit gelato is superb.

And the winner is….Thermal storage (for now)

Energy storage is about to get big. New Technologies. Demand Response. $100 a barrel oil. All the old pressures are getting stronger. Grid reliability. Microgeneration and microgrids. Unreliable but attractive renewables. The incentives for energy storage have never been as good. Hydrogen. Vanadium redox. New technologies for energy storage are just over the horizon.

But I am guessing the old fashioned low tech thermal storage will be the first big winner. Well, maybe a little higher tech than it used to be. Peter Drucker observed that a new technology must be an order of magnitude better in either price or performance than a pre-existing technology with market standing to supplant that existing technology. The existing technology can always leverage its market position, its market penetration, and the current producer’s experience to make its own leap forward.

New market conditions are placing a premium on energy storage. Time of day pricing is becoming more common and the price differentials are only going to get bigger. New sources for thermal energy to store are coming out of the new things we do in buildings. New ways to use thermal storage are coming to market.

The needs of the power grid are leading to ever larger price differentials between different times of day. The more sensitive systems in today’s buildings require that buildings establish their own reliability. The greater cost of both minor outages and of using energy at the wrong time now swamp the energy lost during storage. The economic case for buying energy when it is cheap, to be available when needed is getting easier to make.

There are new sources of thermal energy to harvest. Building chillers can harvest heat from office space. Data centers throw off huge amounts of heat that can be stored for reuse. If we can use this energy, then it will be worthwhile to gather and store this energy.

We now can use even moderate-temperature thermal energy for purposes other than heating and cooling. Old models made ice during the night to take advantage of cheap energy, or collected heat from the sun during the day. Stored thermal energy was used only to cool during the day or heat at night. New microprocessor controlled Stirling engines have improved the efficiency and efficiency of low power electrical generation. Prototypes have generated electricity off temperature differentials of 6C, although production units seem to require five times that.

In the short term, thermal storage will create reliability. In the mid-term it will midwife markets based around energy storage and temporal displacement. In the long term, those markets will be the playing field upon which new technologies complete. But I in the short term, I’m betting on thermal storage.

Note: immediately after writing this, I read about a system using black-top roads for thermal energy collection with geostorage. Perhaps some other time….