35% increase in Electricity prices

The increasing cost of energy became all too apparent to me this morning. At our London home I received a notice from EDF Energy (Electricite De France) telling us they were increasing the monthly direct debit by 35% over the previous payments. We've actually decreased our power usage by about 5% year on year and we normally have a credit amount at the quarterly settlement. While it may be get a temporary easement by switching to another supplier it show which way the wind is blowing and makes a total mockery of any annual inflation figures announced  by the Governor of the Bank of England.



Industry and business must be facing similar increases so the pressure to save on operational electricity bills. There are plenty of technologies which can assist that process, including those which allow you to remotely control the power down of PCs. An important part of the planning process is to accurately meter the usage of power. Once you know the baseline it is the possible to consider risk assessed power usage reduction measures. Blindly switching off equipment without considering the overall impact can prove to be very expensive.



We usually take a power clamp meter with us when we first visit a data centre. We are no longer surprised when we find sites where the operations manager has no clear idea of power usage per equipment cabinet. They would become more focussed if the power bill was part of their budget.