If you’ve been given the task of finding a green datacenter, it can certainly seem like a daunting project. But the good news is that there are so many ways to incorporate green practices in a datacenter that you can meet your company’s green initiatives in numerous ways.
While solar panels have not always met the needs of datacenters, the technology is changing—and is beginning to meet datacenters’ huge needs. For instance, Phoenix IT infrastructure provider i/o Data Centers is one of the first to take advantage of newer solar panel technology. In June, the company announced that it is installing photovoltaic panels on the new Phoenix ONE data center’s 11-acre roof. According to the company, not only will the technology generate up to 4.5 megawatts of power, it also includes a thermal storage system that will cool the datacenter for up to six hours a day. So finding a datacenter that uses solar panel technology is certainly a good place to start.
Wind power is also seeing growth in powering datacenters. For instance, Other World Computing, a small ISP and hosting company in Illinois, began relying entirely on an on-site turbine in October—likely making it the first U.S. datacenter to be completely powered by an on-site turbine. You may not find a datacenter that is entirely wind powered, but there are a growing number that use it as part of a green package.
Another way you can make use of wind power for your company’s green initiative is through buying offsets, as the Microsoft Virtual Earth service does. The company’s Boulder, Colo. site purchases offsets from Boulder-based Renewable Choice Energy. This system is clearly not powered directly by wind, but it does allow you to take advantage of green power, while meeting carbon reduction goals.
You could also find a datacenter that has skipped the huge investment of wind or solar power and instead follow the lead of organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency. In November, the agency announced that it had made minor tweaks to its datacenter and had cut the entire agency’s energy output by 20 percent. One change that was made was simply that cables were rearranged and, in turn, airflow was improved.
No matter what other green initiatives your datacenter include, certainly do what Facebook did recently and lease database centers that were built with efficiency in mind. For instance, one of the spaces that Facebook leased features an energy efficiency design that includes slab floors and cool air deposited from above—making the most of nature’s law that cool air descends, while warm air rises.
The good news is that no matter what your company’s overall green goal is, with the choices that innovation and technology now present, a greener datacenter is definitely within reach.
