Data Centre Provider Saves 1500 Homes Worth Of Energy

Colocation services provider Fortune Data Centers revealed on 10 August that it has received an incentive award of about $900,000 (£547,512) from its power provider, Pacific Gas & Electric, to help offset the costs of energy efficiency design improvements.

It marked the second-largest incentive award given by the San Francisco Bay Area power company. In December 2008, PG&E awarded network storage provider NetApp with $1.4 million for its “continued environmental stewardship to improve its energy efficiency, conserve resources and reduce waste,” the electric utility said.

Fortune, based in San Jose, Calif., implemented several energy-efficiency measures as part of its participation in PG&E’s High Tech Energy Efficiency program to save 10,448,592 kilowatts per year — equivalent to powering 1,500 homes annually, or the reduction of 4,200 tons of CO2, PG&E said.

Fortune reconstructed a former clean room facility and built it into a highly efficient data center with an exceptional power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.37 — far superior to the industry average of 2.0, and better than the EPA’s 2011 target of 1.45 for state-of-the-art enterprise-class data centres.

Fortune invested in highly-efficient infrastructure components, selecting critical components such as uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), based on their energy efficiency ratings.

Mechanical improvements included the redesign of the cooling system to minimise the power required for air distribution. Rather than use a traditional raised floor, Fortune chose to supply cold air from an overhead plenum to take advantage of the natural density of cold air and the buoyancy of hot air. Other steps included changing the coils in the air handlers to improve energy efficiency.

The PG&E program provides technical services and analysis of energy efficiency measures to companies like Fortune Data Centers.

PG&E offers incentives for a broad portfolio of technologies, including virtualisation/consolidation, massive array of idle disks (MAID) data storage systems, high-efficiency power conditioning and delivery equipment, PC network management software, and strategies for lowering air conditioning energy use and costs.