Infrastructure Resilience Briefing — July 9, 2024
Uptime Institute’s 2024 Global Data Center Survey and U.S. Department of Energy grid progress updates show outage costs climbing and transmission constraints tightening, pushing operators to harden power resilience, supplier contracts, and regulatory reporting.
Executive briefing: Uptime Institute’s 2024 Global Data Center Survey underscores that significant outages remain stubbornly common and increasingly expensive. A majority of operators reported at least one serious outage in the past three years, and more than half of those incidents carried direct costs above $100,000, with a growing share exceeding $1 million. Power failures and cooling disruptions continue to be the leading root causes, followed by network and software issues. In parallel, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office (GDO) spring 2024 progress update details persistent transmission bottlenecks, with more than 2,000 gigawatts of generation and storage stuck in interconnection queues and at least a dozen nationally significant high-voltage projects navigating permitting and financing hurdles. Data center and digital infrastructure operators must integrate these findings into energy resilience strategies, procurement plans, and regulatory briefings.
The survey spotlights the financial drag of downtime: consequential outages now routinely deliver six- and seven-figure losses when factoring revenue impact, remediation, customer compensation, and reputational damage. Operators cited limited visibility into power distribution, aging switchgear, and human error during maintenance as contributing factors. Sustainability metrics, including water use, Scope 2 emissions, and grid interaction, are becoming board-level KPIs, but Uptime observed that many organisations still lack unified reporting across facilities portfolios. Meanwhile, DOE emphasised that U.S. load growth from AI, electrification, and extreme weather requires tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines by 2035, expanded grid-enhancing technologies, and closer collaboration with state and regional planners. The intersection of these trends means operators must harden on-site infrastructure, secure redundant energy contracts, and strengthen grid partnerships to avoid cascading outages.
Survey and grid highlights
- Outage causation: Power infrastructure remains the top driver of major incidents, with operators identifying utility disturbances, UPS failures, transfer switch malfunctions, and human error during switching as critical weak points.
- Cost escalation: More than half of serious outages now cost at least $100,000, and the proportion exceeding $1 million continues to climb as digital businesses expand critical workloads.
- Operational maturity: Operators with formal root-cause analysis programmes and cross-site incident repositories reported faster recovery and lower repeat incident rates, yet only a minority have fully standardised processes.
- Transmission backlog: DOE’s progress update notes multi-year delays for interconnection approvals, emphasising the need for advanced permitting, transmission cost allocation reforms, and grid-enhancing technologies such as dynamic line ratings and power flow controllers.
- Regional risk: NERC’s 2024 Summer Reliability Assessment flags elevated risk in MISO, SPP, and ERCOT during extreme weather, highlighting exposure for data centers dependent on those grids.
Control framework mapping
- ISO/IEC 22301 & 27001: Use business continuity management and information security controls to codify outage response, recovery objectives, and resilience testing.
- NIST CSF 2.0: Align asset management (ID.AM), supply chain risk (ID.SC), protective technology (PR.PT), detection (DE.CM), and recovery (RC.RP) with survey-driven improvements.
- Uptime Institute Tier & Management & Operations (M&O) standards: Reassess facility designs, staffing, maintenance, and change management against Tier and M&O criteria.
- DOE and FERC guidance: Incorporate GDO’s transmission milestones, FERC Order 2023 interconnection reforms, and state-level resilience rules (e.g., California’s SB 1185 energy emergency planning) into regulatory compliance plans.
Resilience programme enhancements
- Power system modernisation. Conduct condition assessments on switchgear, UPS, PDUs, generators, and fuel systems; prioritise replacements or retrofits with predictive maintenance sensors and remote monitoring.
- Energy portfolio diversification. Secure multi-utility feeds where available, expand on-site generation (fuel cells, microturbines, solar plus storage), and evaluate long-duration energy storage partnerships.
- Grid coordination. Engage regional transmission organisations (RTOs), utilities, and DOE programmes to monitor capacity constraints, apply for transmission facilitation support, and align growth plans with grid upgrade timelines.
- Operational playbooks. Update incident command structures, blackout restoration procedures, and customer communications to reflect lessons learned from recent outages.
- Data and analytics. Implement real-time power quality monitoring, predictive failure analytics, and integrated dashboards that connect facility telemetry with business impact metrics.
Procurement and vendor management
- Refresh contracts with critical power equipment suppliers to include guaranteed response times, spare parts commitments, and joint root-cause analysis obligations.
- Require transmission and utility partners to provide visibility into planned maintenance, capacity constraints, and emergency procedures.
- Integrate DOE transmission progress criteria and interconnection queue status into site selection, PPA negotiations, and expansion approvals.
- Mandate that colocation and cloud partners share outage reporting metrics, preventive maintenance schedules, and sustainability data for multi-tenant transparency.
Testing and assurance
- Conduct black start and load transfer exercises at least annually, coordinating with utilities to simulate grid disturbances.
- Run tabletop simulations covering cascading failures (power plus cooling), communication breakdowns, and customer notification workflows.
- Audit facility documentation, including single-line diagrams, maintenance logs, and incident reports, to ensure accuracy and readiness for regulatory review.
- Benchmark outage and energy metrics against peer operators to calibrate investment priorities.
Metrics and reporting
- Outage frequency and severity per facility, including root cause classification and downtime minutes.
- Financial impact of incidents (direct costs, SLA credits, lost revenue) tracked over rolling 12-month periods.
- Energy resilience KPIs such as utility interruption minutes, generator runtime capacity, fuel autonomy, and storage availability.
- Transmission project dependencies: status of grid upgrades serving each campus, interconnection queue position, and expected energisation dates.
- Sustainability and compliance indicators: Scope 2 emissions intensity, water usage effectiveness, and adherence to DOE/NERC reporting requirements.
90-day action plan
- Days 1–30: Review Uptime survey findings with executive leadership, update risk registers, and prioritise facilities for detailed power assessments; brief boards on DOE transmission constraints affecting expansion plans.
- Days 31–60: Launch engineering studies on critical power paths, initiate procurement for upgrades, engage utilities and transmission planners for capacity updates, and align communications playbooks.
- Days 61–90: Execute load transfer tests, deploy enhanced monitoring, finalise supplier SLAs, and publish integrated outage and energy resilience dashboards for leadership oversight.
Regulatory reporting and stakeholder communications
- Prepare documentation packages for regulators and investors that consolidate outage trends, mitigation spending, and grid-interconnection status; align disclosures with SEC, EU CSRD, and state-level reporting expectations.
- Coordinate with sustainability teams to connect resilience investments to ESG narratives, highlighting avoided emissions from improved efficiency and backup optimisation.
- Develop customer communication templates that explain grid-related risks, resilience investments, and escalation paths during prolonged disturbances.
Capital and portfolio planning
- Integrate outage cost modelling into capital allocation, ensuring expansion projects include redundant feeds, on-site generation, and energy storage from day one.
- Evaluate regional diversification strategies that balance latency requirements with grid reliability, regulatory climate, and renewable availability.
- Prioritise projects eligible for federal incentives, such as DOE’s Transmission Facilitation Program or Inflation Reduction Act energy credits, to offset resilience investments.
Zeph Tech partners with digital infrastructure leaders to translate survey intelligence and grid policy updates into resilient facility designs, transparent reporting, and coordinated energy strategies.
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