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Silicon Valley and San Francisco data center industry's go-to man at California's largest utility is planning to continue his work as consultant to energy providers in the US after his upcoming departure from the current position.
Mark Bramfitt, the principal manager for PG&E's energy efficiency incentive program for businesses, hopes to use his expertise in helping other utilities around the country set up programs similar to the one he currently runs. The California utility's program is reportedly the most robust in the country, rewarding large energy users like data centers with hefty rebates for deploying technologies and implementing design methodologies that increase their energy efficiency.
“I hope to sign up a half-dozen utilities and help them get going,” Bramfitt said. “One of the things I really want to do is magnify the success that PG&E has had. If I can get 10 other utilities to do what PG&E has managed to do in the last three or four years, I'll feel a lot better about this market.”
Nstar – the largest investor-owned utility in Massachussetts – may very well become Bramfitt's first client. The company has recently doubled the budget for its energy efficiency incentive program and is looking at PG&E's experience in the space, he said.
“Their customers are telling their account representatives: 'we want help with data centers.' They've seen what we've done here; they're interested in going after that opportunity and I've helped them with what I can in my spare time at PG&E and we may be doing some work in the future.”
The trend is very common across the country, Bramfitt said.
“I think utilities that don't have energy efficiency programs are going to have them. Their regulators are going to help them do that. The ones that do are growing (their programs). It's increasingly hard to get energy efficiency out of office buildings and the traditional markets and I think this has been a neglected market. There's clearly an awful lot of potential.”
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Keywords: PG&E, Mark Bramfitt, data center energy efficiency, utility rebate, energy efficiency incentive, green data center | | 
