I would suggest including in your "make or buy" equation the possibility to buy at fixed price long term either directly from generators or from a utility. This "buy" option reduces the market volatility risk, and avoids owning the development and operating risks and a "make" option has (the requirement of data centers is to procure massive amounts of "green" electricity, and not necessarily owning the technology that generates it).
Of course, location of the data center and availability of third party long term energy contract is the key topic. If there is not available capacity in that market area, or there are not energy players willing to sell long term at fixed price, in that case the data center might decide to make it, externalizing the O&M costs to a third party player.
Make or buy works 2 ways. Utilities could buy data centers or data centers could buy utilities (as well as just buying a generator).
As a related matter, Neal Stephenson's terrific novel Fall examines what happens if it becomes possible to upload our consciousness to the web. One consequence is that many of the rest of us get jobs generating electricity to sustain the uploaded, and to earn enough to get ourselves uploaded.
From an analytical perspective, I would have strong political economy objections to a regulated utility owning downstream data centers. I suspect regulators would object to that too as being imprudent.
Love Neal Stephenson. He has a new book coming out this fall!
One point you didn't make is the possibility of varying the load to match the availability. To wit: make hay when the sun shines. Or carpe diem. Compute when the sun shines on your solar panels.
Agreed, I emphasized flexibility a bit more in the first two posts in the series, but it's part of the strategy for sure. The make or buy literature is a theory of production so I focused on that.
I would suggest including in your "make or buy" equation the possibility to buy at fixed price long term either directly from generators or from a utility. This "buy" option reduces the market volatility risk, and avoids owning the development and operating risks and a "make" option has (the requirement of data centers is to procure massive amounts of "green" electricity, and not necessarily owning the technology that generates it).
Of course, location of the data center and availability of third party long term energy contract is the key topic. If there is not available capacity in that market area, or there are not energy players willing to sell long term at fixed price, in that case the data center might decide to make it, externalizing the O&M costs to a third party player.
Make or buy works 2 ways. Utilities could buy data centers or data centers could buy utilities (as well as just buying a generator).
As a related matter, Neal Stephenson's terrific novel Fall examines what happens if it becomes possible to upload our consciousness to the web. One consequence is that many of the rest of us get jobs generating electricity to sustain the uploaded, and to earn enough to get ourselves uploaded.
From an analytical perspective, I would have strong political economy objections to a regulated utility owning downstream data centers. I suspect regulators would object to that too as being imprudent.
Love Neal Stephenson. He has a new book coming out this fall!
One point you didn't make is the possibility of varying the load to match the availability. To wit: make hay when the sun shines. Or carpe diem. Compute when the sun shines on your solar panels.
Agreed, I emphasized flexibility a bit more in the first two posts in the series, but it's part of the strategy for sure. The make or buy literature is a theory of production so I focused on that.