Data centers in Japan will not be able to satisfy the standing government mandate to reduce power consumption by 20-25% to compensate for generation capacity lost in the April earthquake and tsunami.

In the most recent open letter to the Japanese government, Japan Data Center Council representatives asked that data center operators be exempt from the requirement for businesses in Tokyo Electric Power Company’s coverage area to use less power.

JDCC also reiterated a previous request to be first in line to receive diesel fuel and asked to have prioritized access to critical-power-equipment replacement parts.

The letter was written in Japanese and dated 22 April. AltaTerra analyst Zen Kishimoto translated it into English and posted highlights from the translation on his blog.

"Interruptions of data center operations would disrupt not only the data center industry but also other industries and segment such as communications, information, business processes and services," Kishimoto’s translation read.

"Data center operations run all the time, 24-by-7, 365 days a year, and cannot be stopped. Please understand data centers’ special role in our society and exempt data centers from the mandated power consumption saving."

The council explained that because they have to operate continuously and maintain constant load, it would be impossible to reduce their power consumption as required.

The letter suggested another factor for the government to take into consideration. Following the disaster and issuance of the load-reduction mandate, many enterprises have been requesting to move in-house servers into data centers. Some have already done so.

JDCC wrote that if all businesses were to make such a move, their power consumption would drop by 33-50% because data centers are optimized for running servers as efficiently as possible.

The council also asked that the government loosen a law that limits the length of time companies are allowed to run diesel generators.

Follow links below to see more of our coverage of the effects of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan on the country’s data center industry.