Northern California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has made headlines by finding novel ways to offer rebates for energy efficiency in the data center. Last week PG&E hosted utility companies from all over the country to brainstorm ideas for new rebate programs and other methods to curtail IT energy consumption.

According to the PG&E Website, the Utility IT Energy Efficiency Coalition comprises over 24 utilities from across the US and Canada that are primed to address the high tech, data center, and IT infrastructure markets. California utilities are well represented, with Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, City of Palo Alto, and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power attending the meeting. Utilities from the Pacific Northwest, Texas, New York, and Canada also participated.

We talked to PG&E’s Mark Bramfitt, supervisor of the customer energy efficiency program for the high tech market about the programs that they’ve had in place so far. Surprisingly, the server virtualization program hasn’t been quite as sucessful as I would have imagined. “The uptake on the virtualization program is a little slower than we wanted,” Bramiftt said. “We’ve received 60 applications in so far.” PG&E has had a number of calls from customers that say “we just did it”. But unfortunately, customers need to come to PG&E before a virtualization project to get the funding. Bramfitt is working on offering a rebate to customers so they can get incentives after the fact.

On the upside, PG&E is seeing a lot of success with its new construction incentives. The Bay Area is currently experiencing a data center construction boom. And Bramfitt is convincing many of them to install air-side and water-side economizers. For more on economizers, check out our case study on United Parcel Service.

“We’re about to pay a customer a $1.4 million incentive [for economizers],” Bramfitt said. “It’s going to be one of the biggest checks we’ve ever written for a new construction.”