Japan’s data center industry is drafting a proposal that could help data center operators in the Tokyo and surrounding areas overcome the costs associated with brownouts being planned by the Government for June to September this year. 

 

The plans are for power provision to be reduced by 25% between 10am and 9pm.  

 

The Japan Data Center Council believes the rolling blackouts are likely to go ahead. This would mean all companies, including data center operators, would have to stop using power for about three hours a day.

 

The planned outages follow the devastating earthquake and subsequent Tsunami which struck North Eastern Japanese on March 11th. 

 

Instead of being forced to provision for the cuts individually, the council believes data center operators would benefit from being part of a coalition which would mean each member facing less frequent, longer power cuts.

 

It said this would reduce maintenance and fuel costs for data center operators in the Tokyo and surrounding area, many of which provide mission-critical facilities, including for financial institutions.

 

Nomura Research Institute senior researcher at the Center for Strategic Management and Innovation Tomoo Misaki told DatacenterDynamics if the plan is approved by the Japanese Government, each data center would instead be allocated a time-out period from 10am and 9pm every four days.

 

"While a majority of the data centers in the industry here will have back-up generators (a majority of which are gas, while others run on diesel), most of them are not designed to run 24 x 7. If you keep running them [continuously] for seven, or 14 days, the failure rate of these could go up [unless costly maintenance on generators is maintained]," Misaki said.

 

Euro-Diesel business development manager Jack Kaspers said most diesel back-up generators, unless providing for Tier 3 or Tier 4 operations, will not be designed for long-term outages such as those proposed by the Japanese Government.

 

"The generators will have a limitation on operation an annual basis of 300 operating hours, after this they will not be able to operate at full power," Kaspers said.

 

The generators can be stopped and started without causing any issues, however, hitting the operating hour limit could drastically increase maintenance costs. Most data center operators will only need to do maintenance every year, but in the case with Japan, maintenance could be required in three months, depending on how much generators had been used previously.

 

Furthermore, a number of data center operators in Japan are on fixed electricity contracts, and the additional resources required for running generators would further drive up costs. Additional maintenance  in the form of continued lubrication would be required daily for diesel generators, according to Kaspers.

 

Misaki said in Japan the council had estimated energy prices for data center operators could rise by three times the current amount if the brownouts are handled on an individual basis.

 

Last year Tokyo experienced some of its hottest June temperatures in history, and this year it is expected temperatures will also increase data center cooling demand.

 

The Tohoku-Chihou-Taiheiyo-Oki earthquake caused a fallout at the Fukishima #1 and#2 plants managed by TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company). In total, it is believed 10 reactors at both are no longer providing power. This has left the nation with an electricity shortfall of 25%, despite efforts to resurrect older no-nuclear (gas and LNG) facilities and increase generation from plants that were previously sitting dormant.

Both are owned and operated by TEPCO. 

"So far as we know, none of the data centers (in Japan) took any damage because of the quake, and none have suffered outages . . . but 10 reactors are offline, most are shut down, and three are suffering serious issues with cooling," Misaki said.

 

One data center operator in Japan, who preferred not to be named, said his company, providing financial and other services on an international scale, had been taken provisions wherever possible to reduce energy use, not only for the business, but the wider community in Japan.

 

"It is business as usual but data center operators are always remind us to shut off lights, turn the blinds down at night – anything that can be done to save power," he said.

 

He said given the importance of the data center industry to Japan, the government should give careful consideration to cuts issued to the industry.

 

Misaki, however, said he can see the silver lining on current issues faced by the industry in Japan today. He said efforts now to reduce power will teach the industry lessons that will help conserve energy and reduce costs in future, overall brining about a much more efficient data center industry.