Nov 17 2008

Serving Up Energy Efficiency

Data centers -- giant server warehouses that centralize the storage and distribution of bits and bytes -- are notorious power hogs, using up to one hundred times the energy per square foot of typical office space. In Northern California, they account for as much as 2.5 percent of all electricity consumption.

At the opening yesterday of its user event CA World 08 in Las Vegas, business software company CA announced plans to focus on ways to reduce power consumption and costs by letting data centers run at higher temperatures, thus reducing the need for cooling. 

"Every data center on average doubles its power consumption every five years, " said Chris Stakutis, vice president of emerging technologies at CA. ". . . You can save five per cent of your cooling costs for every degree warmer you run it. You just need to put in hundreds of wireless thermometers so you are confident you're not exceeding any limits."

IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems have already invaded this market with a vengeance. So have many startups. Santa Clara-based Power Assure won the $100,000 Smart Power category award at the Clean Tech Open in San Francisco on Nov. 6. It specializes in power management software that throttles back unused data center servers, networking equipment and cooling systems to save as much as 50 percent on data center energy bills.

Not to be outdone, Pacific Gas and Electric Company is leading utility industry efforts to promote more energy-efficient data centers, taking advantage of the fact that its revenues are decoupled from electricity sales.

PG&E offers extensive rebates for new data center construction and upgrades that save energy; it also offers rebates all the way down to the desktop, including power management software, premium efficiency PCs, LCD monitors and thin-client systems. The program is on track to save 7 megawatts of electricity this year, and more next.

Last year, PG&E led the formation of a utility IT energy efficiency coalition to focus on improving power management at data centers. It's proven to be a hit.

"We now have almost 40 utilities in the United States and Canada," says Mark Bramfitt, principal program manager in PG&E's Customer Energy Efficiency department. "We are sharing everything we know to get others to copy our programs."

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"PG&E" refers to Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation.