Uptime Sets the Floor
SLAs, tier levels and redundancy are the sector's HACCP: where availability genuinely constrains efficiency, and where it is just the excuse.
9 min read · Jacob Willis, Net Zero Lead · Last reviewed July 2026
Every sector on this platform has a constraint that outranks energy: food factories have HACCP, offices have the lease. In data centres it is availability. Customers buy uptime, contracts guarantee it with penalties attached, and the whole facility (dual power paths, redundant chillers, generators, batteries) is architected around never going dark. That architecture genuinely costs energy, and it also shelters a great deal of waste that merely dresses as resilience. The professional skill this lesson teaches is telling those apart, because in this sector, an efficiency measure that cannot pass a change-control board does not exist.