It was another blisteringly hot day in Santa Clara. Despite the heat, Intel adjusted its thermostats up while sweaty employees worked in darkened offices, admonished to turn off unnecessary lights and equipment.
Is the world's No. 1 chipmaker cutting costs after its recent market beating? Well, probably, but that's not why it was extinguishing lights and turning off the AC. Instead, Intel, Sun, and other Silicon Valley companies were responding to warnings from California's power companiesâ€"power down or risk blacking out.
"Energy is a major worry for California high-tech companies," says Eric Hirst, an electric industry reorganization consultant. A brief power outage at home might mean losing unsaved files on your computer and resetting your clocks, he says, but as annoying as that might be, it's "a tremendously expensive problem when you see the effects across an entire company."
California's recent power problems have taken few by surprise. For 15 years, the state's population and economy have grown steadily, but investments in new power-generation facilities have failed to keep pace. Imported power from Nevada and Oregon temporarily made up for the shortfall, but soaring temperatures this summer raised power demand 15 percent above average peak loads in 1999.
The fallout was swift and merciless, forcing statewide power grid controller California Independent System Operator to declare power emergencies. It asked industrial and commercial users like Intel to voluntarily reduce the amount of power they were using in exchange for lower power rates.
"We had 17 Stage Twos this summer, which shows how close the demand-supply gap is," says Lorie O'Donley, Cal-ISO public information officer. "The problems were exacerbated by the hot weather but still bring attention to how power demand is outstripping supply."
