Bacon's Rebellion

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Looking for Energy Efficiency? Let’s Start with NoVa Data Centers

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by

James A. Bacon
in

In previous posts, I have made the argument that Virginia needs to incentivize Dominion and other electric utilities to invest in conservation programs and energy efficiency as well as expanding electric-generating and transmission capacity. The logical question is… what kind of programs?

Like a program rolled out earlier this week by Pacific Gas & Electric, which is leading the formation of a nationwide coalition of utilities to coordinate energy efficiency programs for the high tech sector, focusing on data centers. Quoting from GreenBiz.com:

PG&E offers a comprehensive portfolio of program and service offerings for the high tech sector, including financial incentives for customers who pursue energy efficiency projects in their data centers. The company was the first to offer incentives for virtualization and server consolidation, a program that is prompting customers to remove underutilized computing equipment using virtualization technology.

Data centers can use up to one hundred times the energy per square foot of typical office space, so the energy efficiency opportunities are significant. “A customer choosing from our menu of programs, which include cooling system improvements, high-efficiency power conditioning equipment retrofits, airflow management tune-ups, virtualization, and replacement of computing and data storage equipment with the latest technologies can generally drive a third to as much as half of the energy use out of their operations,” according to [Mark] Bramfitt [High Tech Segment Manager for PG&E].

Northern Virginia has 14 data farms and more on the drawing boards. It would be comforting to know that Dominion has joined the PG&E coalition. But if it has, it wasn’t mentioned by name in the story.

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3 responses to “Looking for Energy Efficiency? Let’s Start with NoVa Data Centers”

  1. Gold_h2o Avatar
    Gold_h2o

    Here is a good read if you are interested.

    Click Here.

    One thing that jumped out at me was this, “New and improved microchips that can process more data mean that standard-sized servers can do a lot more than their ancestors did, but the newest gear also throws off more heat. And that means cranking up the air conditioning to make sure the computers don’t literally melt themselves into slag.

    Vericenter, an operator of data centers, says a rack of “blade” servers can get as hot as a seven-foot tower of toaster ovens. It gets hot enough that for every dollar a company spends to power a typical server, it spends another dollar on a/c to keep it cool.”

    That being the case, I think one thing that is lacking in the debate over data centers is the fact that chip manufacturers need to develop more energy efficient chips. If you had a chip that required 1/3 less energy to operate you could generate significant savings across the board.

    I am sure chip manufacturers are working on this but we don’t hear much about it.

  2. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Gold H20, Thanks for the validation. There is a new generation of energy-efficient chip coming out, as I bloggged previously here.

  3. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Gee, maybe part of the problem is that driving on the chipways is essentially free. If we just charged by usage we could cut down on the demand side of a lot of long distance electrons, and conserve a lot of heat and electricity.

    🙂

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