Jim Smith, CTO of Digital Realty Trust, summarizes the situation as follows: “the ‘price’ of power is a big issue that affects everyone involved in data centers, and it will become a bigger issue over time. Supply and demand are a major factor in what is driving the price of power for data center operations.” Smith rejects the notion of a “shortage” of power, at least in the strictest sense, but he acknowledges that prices have a tremendous influence on data centers. “The availability of power is an important issue for the datacenter industry, but it would not be accurate to say there is a ‘shortage’ on the horizon,” but “given the volume of power used by datacenter facilities, the price of power has a major impact on operating costs for companies’ IT infrastructure.”

According to EDSA CTO Kevin Meagher, the term “shortage” may well be warranted: “[a power shortage for data centers] is a reality now. The power shortage comes in two flavors. First is simply the inability of the service to provide what is needed, and a version of this is a data center that cannot provide the required alternate source (in the form of standby generation) to meet the peak load of the facility. The second is that the use of power precludes increasing consumption because critical connections (feeders) will not support the increased load.”

But the perspectives of Smith and Meagher are not necessarily at odds; much of the difference is in the focus of each perspective. Indeed, a power shortage may exist more in the sense of higher prices than dwindling supply, but power generation capacity is certainly limited (existing generation facilities can only produce so much power) and data center infrastructure cannot support an unlimited input of power. Thus, depending on one’s specific perspective, a power shortage may legitimately be viewed as unlikely and as already here.