I want to buy a windmill. I think mostly just so I can walk around saying I own one and few others can claim the same. Which is stupid, but the entire notion of renewable energy is intriguing. I’ve looked into the windmill idea and while I think it is high on the cool factor, the ROI on it is pretty dismal. Maybe if we lived in a higher average wind speed area, it would make more sense, but right now–even with rebates–it doesn’t make a ton of sense.

But what it has exposed me to is the whole idea of net metering. Basically, if I had a windmill and produced more electricity than I consumed, I would sell it back the power company. It essentially turns your electrical meter backwards! I love that idea.

So, what if you could do that in the data center? Sell unused capacity: storage capacity, compute capacity, network bandwidth, and even the unused capacity on the desktops and laptops. Yikes! In theory, it is totally possible. I can’t imagine companies selling unused capacity to other companies just yet, but I can imagine selling IT infrastructure capacity to other business units or teams such as engineering, test, and development.

Imagine an IT environment were nothing is rendered useless, everything runs at or near 100% utilization, and you supplement IT infrastructure capital costs by selling back capacity.

Read more of Mark’s blog entries at Liquefying IT.

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