First, Applied Materials made it easier for individuals to get into the solar business by offering to build them ready-to-run factories. Now, SVTC Technologies, at one time a division of Cypress Semiconductor, is getting into the act. The company, which offers research and design services for chip makers, will now offer prototyping and research services for solar companies. Need a lab to crank out samples of your latest silicon cell so that Applied will approve your request to buy a factory to start popping out said cells in mass production? SVTC will do it for you. China's JA Solar is already a customer. Germany's Roth and Rau will help SVTC build out its solar lab and testing facilities. In all, SVTC's solar center will cost between $20 million and $30 million and be capable of popping out 5 megawatts of panels. Traditional solar companies should take note. This is exactly how Taiwan and later Singapore, South Korea and China, became major players in semiconductors. Equipment makers and research institutions began to help them--for large sums of money--develop and subsequently fine-tune their factories. A number of Asian companies also recruited well-known U.S. academics to serve on their technical advisory boards. Although the chip industry remains a multibillion dollar concern, most companies are looking for the next growth market. The race to become a leader in LCD TVs is over. Solar is the next frontier. Look at the resumes of execs behind companies like Signet Solar. They are all old chip guys. And speaking of which, expect to see TV makers like Samsung to start to unveil solar plans. Making LCD TVs is similar to making amorphous silicon solar panels. Applied, in fact, sells similar equipment to both markets. And let's not forget, SunPower is a division of Cypress. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Here are some handy stats on power consumption in data centers Data Center Energy Summit taking place at Sun Microsystems today. Casually drop these factoids at your next cocktail party. Less than nine months: that the time it takes to recover the cost (in terms of lower electrical bills) for putting variable speed fans in a server rather than a fan that runs at a constant, high rate, according to Mukesh Kattar, energy director at Oracle. He tested it and thought payback would take 16 months, The fans, though, only had to operate at 55 percent of their regular speed on average, he said. 1 to 1.8. That's the ratio of power dedicated to support (air conditioning and cooling) compared to the power dedicated to actually running the server when you install these kinds of fans, Kattar added. In a regular situation, the ratio is 8 to 10. He's aiming for a 1 to 3 ratio. 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That's the temperature of the intake air servers can tolerate, according to Dean Nelson, who runs global lab and data center design services for Sun. Sun conducted a chill-off with several different cooling systems. Most servers are sold to work in environments with 65 degree intake air. (Intake air is the air that gets sucked in by fans to cool down the servers.). "So why are we cooling at 65," he asked. $19 billion. That's the total value of datacenter construction projects being undertaken by 21 large customers in the U.S. at the moment, according to Nelson. Data center construction is probably the only healthy segment of the building industry. A million bucks. That's what a raised floor costs in a good-sized data center, according to Nelson. Historically, raised floors were used to store the cables that connect computers as well as the cold air blowers. With new cooling techniques, you don't need these anymore. 50,000 square feet and 5 megawatts. That's the size and power consumption of a large data center today, according to Subodh Bapat, who runs Sun's energy efforts 500,000 square feet and 50 megawatts. That's the average large datacenter in 2020, he said. 8,500 hours. That's the number of hours in a year that you could cool your data center in San Francisco with ambient air. There are only 8,760 hours you have to worry about. $18.5 billion. The amount of money spent on data center power in 2005, according to Bapat. $250 billion. The amount of power spent on data center power if nothing is changed in 2012, according to numbers touted by Bapat from IDC. Gar.

Santa Clara, Calif.--Here's a novel idea. Some cities are examining the possibility of installing data centers, those energy-gobbling server rooms we all rely on, on mothballed ships. Although high-speed lines would have to be extended to the docks, the energy savings would be tremendous because these ship-bound data centers would need far less air conditioning than standard data centers. Air conditioning accounts for 33 to 50 percent of the power that gets pumped into data centers. The air is cool in many of the world's seaports. More important, ships sit in the water.  "It (a ship) has the biggest heat sink in the world beneath it," said Subodh Bapat, who oversees Sun's green and energy efficiency efforts. Sun is hosting a data center energy summit today. For the past two years, Sun has been touting the energy efficiency message hard.  In another place, a municipality is contemplating taking the hot water that gets produced in data centers and pumping it--after filtration--into its public pools. The water that comes from data centers never gets hot enough to crank turbines, but it's warm enough for applications such as this.  Ambient air cooling with air-side economizers is also gaining traction. In San Francisco, one study noted that ambient air is cool enough to cool server rooms in that city 8,500 hours a year. Cooling is only needed 8,760 hours a year, he said. Thus, anyone building data centers there can whack their electrical costs by designing the building with passive air cooling in mind. (Microsoft earlier this year told me that they were going to take advantage of ambient air cooling in a new data center going up in Ireland.) Ambient air can also be amplified with a technology called earth pipes. With earth pipes, air gets pumped into a miles-long network of pipes approximately 30 feet underground. The air gets chilled there and then comes up to cool off the server room. (Side note: the ancient Egyptians used a similar technology.) Even with the cost that comes with filtering the air of particles and moisture, ambient air is still cheaper than air conditioning, according to Bapat. Other companies are also implementing the ice cube concept. In this, cheap electricity at night is used to run ice makers. The ice then melts during the day: the cool air acts as air conditioning. Remember sticking your head in the freezer as a kid and breathing in the air? Same concept. And here's another idea: let computers tolerate warmer air, according to Dean Nelson, who runs the global lab and datacenter design services at the company. If they can live in warmer temperatures, less air conditioning is needed.       

Despite the near daily hum telling us that we're in big trouble, sometimes we read something that makes us think: wow, we're in big trouble. An Ernst & Young report released yesterday profiling 40 benchmark oil exploration and production companies in the U.S. found oil production has remained flat at 1.2 billion barrels per year since 2004, after declining from 1.3 billion barrels per year in 2003. The benchmark companies represent 74 percent of U.S. oil reserves, which have also remained flat since 2006 at 16.1 billion barrels. Actually, to break that down a little more, proven reserves from independent oil companies were actually up seven percent over the last year. Proven reserves from the integrated companies - Exxon, Chevron, etc. - were down two percent over the same period. But maybe things aren't as bad as they seem. Surely the oil companies must have cut production to reflect some other market variable, like bottlenecking through our nation's inadequate refining capacity. How else do you explain those margins? Actually, the oil companies are pretty much screwed. Exploration costs - the amount companies spend to find oil - increased 165 percent between 2003 and 2007 to $12.8 billion. Development costs - the amount companies spend to take petroleum out of the ground - grew by 180 percent to $18.4 billion over the same period. Growing demand pushed up revenue 12 percent to $141.5 billion on the year, despite the fact that the price per barrel actually declined slightly from January 1, 2006 to January 1, 2007. Significantly, however, net revenue increased only four percent "due to rising production costs and increases in depletion, depreciation, and amortization." The cost of finding and extracting oil is growing at an obscene rate, while revenues have been propped up by high demand. As prices rise to reflect market tightness, we can expect income to continue falling as exploration and production costs continue their meteoric rise. Falling demand, at least in the U.S., can't be far behind. Someplace, somewhere Denis Hayes is smiling. Actually, it's right over here. As Hayes takes the latest cap-and-trade bill to die a miserable death in the Senate to task, he also outlines an effective policy proposal that may find some support among U.S. oil exploration and production companies. Hayes argues "the backbone of any comprehensive policy to limit greenhouse gas emissions must cap carbon at the places - coal mines, oil fields, pipelines, ports - where it enters the economy." The proposals in Lieberman-Warner, as with those about to come into force as part of RGGI and currently in force in the European Union, place a cap on carbon at the points where it enters the atmosphere. Regulating the latter would proved to be nearly impossible. In 2006 there were 336,000 factories in the United States, more than 10,000 coal, natural gas, and petroleum generators, and roughly 150 oil refineries. By comparison, Hayes estimates there are 2,000 points in the U.S. where carbon dioxide enters the economy. Given that oil production has remained flat since 2004, and is likely declining based on historical trends, it may actually be to the benefit of oil companies to hop on board with Hayes's proposal. With the number of point sources for carbon dioxide entering the economy likely to fall, oil producers would feel the pinch less in the long-term than if the suddenly saw a policy-influenced demand drop as factories are forced to switch to cleaner power sources or it automakers are forced to internalize the carbon cost of the cars they produce. Furthermore, capping carbon dioxide at its emissions source would serve to regulate the amount of oil or natural gas or coal allowed to enter the economy. This would let these companies internally regulate their production to match their carbon allowances, extending out their shrinking supply while charging a much higher price. Not only would this save on further exploration costs - there's no need to develop heavy oil or bituminous sands if you know last year's exploration can stay in the ground for another year or two - but it may even help prop up that flagging net income rate.