In fact, when you look at the servers and the computers that back up the wireless Palm Pilot for example, you'll find it has the electrical load equivalent of a refrigerator. The unremitting desire for electricity is most keenly felt in and around Silicon Valley, where an average microchip processing plant uses enough power to run 50,000 homes. Fearing that the public utility companies will not act fast enough to generate more electricity, Oracle, one of the largest software manufacturers, has spent millions of pounds building its own power station. Many others, including Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, are submitting proposals to do the same. Demand for electricity so outstrips supply that power cuts in Silicon Valley are increasingly frequent.
Computers require an uninterrupted supply to function properly.
Power disturbances are capable of causing more than 17,000 different computer problems, from frozen cursors to a serious crash. The power supply in Silicon Valley was recently drained to a point where dozens of companies lost millions of dollars. The event was the most serious indicator so far that America's electricity supply cannot cope with the power needed to run the digital economy. The power industry is building new plants, but they cannot be completed fast enough and are hugely expensive. There are now plans for a temporary floating power plant on a barge to serve Silicon Valley this summer, when even more power is needed to fuel the vast air-conditioning systems.