Category: Power and Cooling

GalaxyVisions and its subsidiary ColoGuard have reduced usage of mechanical air conditioning at their shared Brooklyn data center by 75% since implementation of airside economization at the facility two years ago.

GalaxyVisions VP of operations Ruben Magurdumov said deployment of an airside economizer at the company’s facility in the New York City borough gave the company substantial efficiency advantages, even with this winter’s unusually warm weather.

For your weekend reading, here’s a recap of five noteworthy stories that appeared on Data Center Knowledge this past week. Enjoy! Google Spent $951 Million on Data Centers in 4Q – Google invested nearly a billion dollars in its Internet infrastructure in the last quarter of 2011, recording capital expenditures (CapEx) of $951 million. Google’s CapEx spending was about $271 million more than in the third quarter of 2011, when it invested $680 million in its infrastructure. Upgrading a Landmark Data Center Hub – How do you expand the power and cooling capacity for an 80-year-old building with historic landmark status and limited roof space, located in the middle of a noise-sensitive neighborhood in the middle of New York City? All those challenges come together at one of the most familiar addresses in the telecom industry – 60 Hudson Street.

Rittal made a number of announcements this week, including a cabinet that can be bolted on to an outside wall to make use of free air cooling. The cabinet specialist said its latest Modular Safe offering Extend is designed for medium-sized users. It makes use of horizontal air flow with separate cold and hot sides with cooled air from outside directed in from of the IT system. “The cooling unit is installed between the side panel of the Modular Safe and the outer wall on the site,” Rittal said.

Does this story sound familiar? A Pacific Northwest state with affordable power and an ideal climate for free cooling attracts a cluster of data center projects. Then a large data center provider is told it may face a large, unanticipated tax bill due to an interpretation of state law. Legislators spring into action to draft bills to address the issue and maintain the state’s attractiveness as a data center destination? No, it’s not Washington state, where this scenario played out in 2007-11. It’s neighboring Oregon, where a dispute with the state on property taxes affecting Facebook’s Prineville data center leaves the Oregon Department of Revenue searching for a fix. The Statesman Journal reports that the problem stems from how state officials originally defined Facebook as a company. The tax issues began in August 2011 and in October tax authorities told the Bend Bulletin newspaper that Facebook ...

A world leader in cooling and heating system innovation, Star replaced an existing R22 refrigeration plant with a highly energy efficient, low maintenance solution. Star has provided the banking client with a state-of-the-art data centre cooling system designed for a low carbon, cost saving operation. Operating as a data centre since 1990 in a confidential location, the building features two main data halls each with independant power and cooling infrastructure. Earlier this year IT and computer server systems in one of the data halls were being replaced as part of a major refurbishment programme. The existing plant had a total cooling capacity of 2,700kW and operated on R22, an ozone-depleting HCFC refrigerant currently being phased out by EU regulations. The new cooling system features four 1,100kW chillers operating on synthetic refrigerant R134a.

Colocation and cloud hosting provider Green House Data this week unveiled design details for its new data center, which will use free cooling year-round. The 25,000 square foot facility in Cheyenne, Wyoming is set to open its doors in the first quarter of 2013. The new facility will use a custom cooling system from Deerns America, which has been hired for its expertise in green data center design. Deerns America, a mechanical and electrical engineering firm, will implement its Green Cooling for Data Centers (GC-DC) technology. Green House Data says it expects this approach to outside air cooling, and with its efficient design, will allow the new facility to run at an annual average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.16 and a peak PUE of 1.22.

Facility built to support Blue Waters supercomputer 11 January 2012 by Yevgeniy Sverdlik Print The National Petascale Computing Facility at the University of Illinois The newly built data center at the University of Illinois that will soon support one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers received LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council. Even with 24MW of critical load, the Natio

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) announced that the National Petascale Computing Facility (NPCF) at the University of Illinois has been earned a Gold-level certification under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating program for energy-efficient buildings. Blue Waters Constructed in 2010 the University of Illinois and NCSA opened the NPCF data center as the home to supercomputers and other high-performance systems operated by NCSA and used by scientists and engineers across the country. The Blue Waters project encompassed the NPCF and a 10 petaflop supercomputer, which was initially a venture with IBM. In 2011 NCSA and IBM determined that the project was too complex to proceed. IBM pulled the plug and NCSA later awarded they contract to Cray to build a XE6 system.

IBM has a press release on 27 of its 35 European data centers receiving energy efficiency status. European Commission Awards IBM for Energy Efficient Data Centers 27 IBM Data Centers in Europe Receive Data Center Energy Efficiency Status Tab navigation News release Related XML feeds Contact(s) information ARMONK, N.Y. - 05 Jan 2012: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the European Commission (EC), the executive body of the European Union, has awarded 27 IBM Data Centers for energy efficiency, based on the European Union (EU) Code of Conduct for Data Centers. The honor represents the largest portfolio of data centers from a single company to receive the recognition. The EU Code of Conduct was created in response to increasing energy consumption in data centers. The EU aims to inform and encourage data center operators and owners to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner without decreasing mission critical data center ...

The European Commission has awarded 27 data centres of technology giant IBM for energy efficiency, based on the European Union (EU) Code of Conduct for Data Centres. The honour represents the largest portfolio of data centres from a single company to receive the recognition, IBM said. Increasing energy consumption led to the creation of the EU Code of Conduct. The EU aims to inform and encourage data centre operators on reducing energy consumption in an cost-effective manner that doesn't negatively impact mission-critical data centre functions. The assessment is made against a set of best practices to reduce energy losses, which include the usage of energy-efficient hardware, installing free cooling and cold aisle containment, IBM added.

NTT America’s Technology and Infrastructure Assets Drive Global Business Growth January 3, 2012 1 Comment » NTT America, a global infrastructure services provider and wholly-owned subsidiary of NTT Communications Corporation, today announced the company’s continued progress in keeping customers ahead of the curve and supporting customer investments during 2011. Throughout the year, company efforts focused on critical business trends including cloud computing, energy efficiency, and customers’ g

What’s up with Google and biomass power? By Katie Fehrenbacher Dec. 27, 2011, 12:46pm PT 4 Comments * Tweet * * * Out of all of Google’s close to $1 billion in clean power projects, turning biomass into energy seems like the least relevant technology to Google’s core business. But Google has made a few small investments into biofuels and biomass to energy projects including a venture investment into CoolPlanetBiofuels earlier this year, and one I learned about this week: a project that turns was

It appears Facebook (News - Alert) is taking a line from the coveted Christmas carol “Let there be peace on Earth,” as after close to two years of campaigning, Facebook has finally agreed to work with Greenpeace to make Facebook data center activities greener, with an emphasis on renewable energy. “From today, Facebook has a siting policy that states a preference for access to clean, renewable energy supply for its future data centers,” Greenpeace said on Dec. 15. “Coal power is still a feature of Facebook for now, but as they say in the IT sector – it’s been deprecated.” As experts all over look to find ways to reduce data center power consumption and rising power costs, some are suggesting that the use of green power is the way to accomplish it. Greenpeace is one company that is looking forward to working with Facebook to push for more investment into ...

As modular data center solutions have emerged as a viable deployment model, most vendors have continued to offer 20-foot and 40-foot enclosures, sticking with the ISO-standard sizes used in the early container models from Sun Microsystems and Google. Elliptical Mobile Systems (EMS) has pursued a different course, specializing in “Micro Modular Data Centers,” smaller enclosures that can house a single rack of IT equipment and a heat exchanger. In early testing, the company’s latest model, the R.A.S.E.R. HD, has shown the ability to cool IT equipment using warm water – a capability that offers major energy efficiency gains. The R.A.S.E.R. HD is a 42U enclosure designed to handle IT loads from 20 kW to 80 kW. It can be deployed indoors or outdoors, and features active fire suppression, electronic security, environmental monitoring and building automation.

Recently we covered the idea of a biomass powered data centers and received a great deal of favorable feedback. We are delighted to see such a keen interest from the data center industry to address the ever increasing demand for electricity through a greater reliance on renewable and alternative energy systems. Today we take a look at what may be an emerging energy source for the data center: natural gas and the fuel cell, via a reformer. (Although the reformer could work with numerous other fossil fuels and even swamp/landfill gas) With organizations coming under greater scrutiny for their total environmental impact, and more reporting annual CO2 emissions not to mention carbon taxes, we expect to see more interest emerging for relatively clean, on-site energy production. Especially when that on-site system eliminates typical transmission and distribution loses and produces beneficial community heating/cooling as a byproduct. Putting aside the ...