POWERING INTERNET HOTELS & MODERN OFFICE BUILDINGS (PART 4)

POWERING INTERNET HOTELS

& MODERN OFFICE BUILDINGS
(Last Part of the Series)

CONCLUSION

IMPLICATIONS TO THE ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY

The implications of this story to the electric power industry are obvious:

1) The Need for new generation capacity;
2) The Need for new transmission capacity;
3) The Need for upgrades to distribution systems;
4) The Increased role for distributed generation; and
5) The Possible revisions to existing tariffs to recover upgrades & redundancy costs.

All the above are financially, socially and politically very difficult to achieve. The distribution upgrades and new generation capacity requirements to include redundancy created by the New Economy, raises the question of whether existing tariffs and policies are sufficient to recover the huge investments or funding required.

But why worry? The rapid growth of the Internet data center sector has not affected the Philippines. It’s California’s or USA’s problem.

But then, there has already been IT Parks sprouting all over in the country (Cebu City included) - hyping to the world that these are the future IT hubs in Asia. And the Philippines being renown of its IT professionals would not become exceptions to the quest of other Internet Hotel sites. Should we forego these opportunities? In Cebu’s Ayala Center and IT Park, multi-national IT heavy companies are now populating there with thousands of employment opportunities given to Cebu, other Visayas and Mindanao professionals. And Call Centers now abound the city and high rise office buildings have shown their might in this part of the country. Economy in Cebu has obviously risen as can be seen in modern world-class malls that we have now. Consequently, the Visayan Electric Company registers a dramatic rise in load growth recently way ahead as compared to national average of 7% per year. These are indications of the effects of IT in our social lives in Cebu.

It may not be good to be dreaming but to me, there’s no escape from these opportunities.

IMPLICATIONS TO THE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS

The other reason why I’m sharing this piece in this conference is that, we electrical engineers must be the first ones to be aware of what’s going on outside the country, electrically. We should know what Internet Hotels are all about and how power systems have to be fitted to IT environments, especially in modern buildings. This will surely help us Filipino engineers in our journey to become world-class technocrats.

In this conference there will be sessions on Power Advocacy. We must realize gentlemen that the Power Advocacy that we shall be talking about are all addressed to the serious brink of power shortfall we are facing today - reminiscent to the black-outs in the 1990’s. This shortfall however is only referring to existing & the feared but foreseen loads, not the future such as described in this paper.

Thank you and good morning…

Doods A. Amora, PEE