Can your data center handle repeated power outages?
The energy supply situation in Europe is tense. Reduced gas supplies from Russia and shut down nuclear power plants are causing us headaches. The federal government is already warning of energy supply bottlenecks in the coming winter. Overall, energy consumption in Switzerland has fallen, but not electricity consumption; it has risen a whopping 8% since the turn of the millennium. The Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) explains the increase in electricity consumption with the positive economic development and population growth. In addition, consumption increased further during Corona: the population increasingly worked and cooked in their own four walls due to home offices.
In view of the impending and, above all, real shortage of electricity in winter, the question arises as to how electricity can be further saved in Switzerland? – The answer to this comes from the federal government in three stages.
Three-step federal emergency plan
- Step: Appeal to the population to save money
A first step would be appeals from the Federal Council to the population for savings. As past experience has shown, it is often not enough if everyone does not pull together. In this case, the Federal Council wants to ban certain applications such as jacuzzis, saunas, indoor swimming pools, ski lifts and snow cannons in winter, but also neon signs.
- Step: Large consumers have to reduce
If step 1 is not enough, large consumers must reduce their consumption to 80%. Because we know that the large volume of electricity consumption in the Swiss economy is buried. This measure could prevent the last and third step from coming into force – the grid shutdown.
- Step: Power off at 4-8-4 or 4-4-4 hourly intervals
What does it mean? All networks must be switched off periodically.
4-8-4: The grid will be switched off for four hours and will provide electricity for eight hours.
4-4-4: The network is switched off and on again every four hours.
So far these are all plans and worst case scenarios. Whether they occur depends on many other unforeseeable factors.
So what does this have to do with your IT infrastructure?
We currently have around 85 data centers in Switzerland, which account for almost 4% of total Swiss consumption!
(Source: Adrian Altenburger from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences on behalf of the Federal Office of Energy)
For comparison: the city of Bern only uses half as much electricity. Thanks to the many data centers in Switzerland, it is possible to check emails on your cell phone, exchange money or stream videos.
However, this exacerbates our problem, as new data centers are constantly being built and their maintenance uses up even more energy reserves due to the complex cooling.
Data centers can be much more energy efficient – up to 45% is possible! Smaller companies in particular that operate their own data centers could make savings. This is done by no longer cooling their server rooms down to 20°, because 32° would be enough.
What if the power suddenly goes out?
You have to make sure that the network continues to work. This is not that easy, because UPS systems from SMEs usually only bridge power outages for minutes and not hours, as the third step of the federal emergency plan stipulates.
According to the federal government, in the event of a power shortage, large data centers and cloud services would not be affected by rationing. However, the SME's internal server rooms do. – So take precautions with us and migrate your IT infrastructure to the cloud or to the redIT data centers now. We are happy to help!