February 28th, 2009 
Tushar Mathur [Here is an excellent article on cloud computing and SaaS. It clearly demonstrates that locating cloud infrastructure at remote renewable energy sites has a huge cost advantage because you don’t have to pay the huge markup for transmission of power. With advent of cap and trade, the demand for renewable power is going to increase significantly so those organizations that deploy or use cloud services that have their own source of renewable power independent of the electrical grid will benefit significantly. The challenge then is to how to make the service reliable – but since cloud computing is geographically distributed reliability is ensured through geographical replication.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/13/1852241
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.pdf
“UC Berkeley researchers have outlined their view of cloud computing, which they say has great opportunity to exploit unprecedented IT resources if vendors can overcome a litany of obstacles. ‘We argue that the construction and operation of extremely large-scale, commodity-computer data centers at low-cost locations was the key necessary enabler of Cloud Computing,’
Price of kilowatt-hours of electricity by region
Price per KWH and reasons for price differences:
3.6¢ Idaho Hydroelectric power; not sent long distance
10.0¢ California Electricity transmitted long distance over the grid;
limited transmission lines in Bay Area; no coal
fired electricity allowed in California.
18.0¢ Hawaii Must ship fuel to generate electricity
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