Advantages of Using a Green Data Center

December 20, 2012 By

 There are millions of servers running worldwide on a daily basis. Often these are being enhanced and managed, but they are not always used. It is approximated that these unused servers cost billions every year.  This will always be a major waste of money, as well as a waste of precious energy.

Green data centers have recognized these wastes and worked to repair them. Many MNC’s are now more eco-conscious and are contemplating what green data centers can offer. Here are a few common advantages associated with green data center use

1.       Turning Off Unused or Dead Servers

When a company partners with a data center, it provides a specified amount of storage it requires. From there, the data center will allocate required space and also additionally provide extra space for expansion. But this creates dead server space. It is estimated that up to a fifth of all servers are sitting idle. These hardware pieces will always consume power and other resources, increasing the costs incurred by both the data center as well as the customer. Green data centers turn off these dead servers. The energy consumption is lowered, and thus, costs, which results in lower customer fees.

2.       Virtualization

Most companies presume that they need one server for each piece of software. This is not true. Green data centers utilize what is referred to as virtualization. The software management system places multiple pieces of software on the same server. So this reduces the costs to a great extent.

3.       Delaying Capital Expenditures

One among the main reasons data centers cost so much is that the data center has expenditures for power use estimates. Green data centers completely remove this excess

spending by using power on demand. Constant monitoring and analysis allows green data centers to only use the amount of power they need. The unused power is used for other applications.

4.       Storage Consolidation:

By performing consolidation in data centers can result in gaining more efficiency and helps to move one step closer to become Green data centers. To know more about consolidation in data centers follow the link given below

http://www.datacentertalk.com/2012/12/steps-for-successful-data-center-consolidation/

5.       Installing Best Network Monitoring Tool

Installing best network monitoring tool will ensure less downtime and less resource wastage. These tools will also help data center managers to remove defected hardware which might consume more power than normal ones. In current industry you can find many network monitoring tools, select any one of the tool which suits your business and more even more closer in becoming Green data center.

Along with all these steps, data center managers should ensure to implement alternative methods of cooling data centers, power

resource and other necessary steps in order to gain Green Gold LEED (leadership in Energy and Environment design) certification from USGBC (U.S Green Building Council).

Green data centers will have higher fees to start, but in the long-term, they are more efficient and always cost effective.

 

Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world.

Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: Green IT Tagged With: , ,

Bharti Airtel Launches Green Data Center in Mumbai

December 6, 2012 By

                Bharti Airtel is a leading telecommunication company with operations across 20 nations headquartered in Delhi, India. Bharti Airtel is ranked among top 5 mobile service providers in terms of subscribers. Bharti Airtel has over 246 million customers in 20 countries across Africa and Asia. Bharti Airtel in India offers services like 2G, 3G, 4G, high speed broadband through DSL, national and international long distance services, IPTV, fixed line and DTH.

                Bharti Airtel launched a new green data center in Mumbai. This new data center is designed to achieve 1.7 to 1.75 PUE, making it as one of the most efficient data centers in India. This new data center will be capable to

offer managed hosting, remote infrastructure, cloud computing, disaster recovery and co-location services to small and medium sized organizations. Mumbai facility is Bharti Airtel’s eight Tier-3+ data center in India and other centers in NCR, Chennai, Pune and Bangalore. This new green data center has been commissioned and designed with NetMagic Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

                President of Airtel Business Drew Kelton said, “Mumbai is the commercial capital of India and is also one of the world’s top centers of commerce as a result it offers humungous opportunity to provide IT managed and cloud services to enterprise customers. With the launch of this facility, Airtel takes another step in moving beyond its core connectivity services and into collocation, managed and hosting services and bringing these services closer to our clients in Mumbai. It supports our drive to be the preferred IT&T provider delivering end to end solutions to our customers.”

Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world.

Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,

Data Center Credentials for a Green Environment

November 13, 2012 By

Knowing the importance of taking measurements in your Data Center, what elements are useful to measure to evaluate how green a room is and to quantify the impact of various upgrades? The sections that follow address this question.

Energy Usage

The single-most important resource for you to measure in your Data Center is energy. How much power the facility has and how much power is consumed by both IT equipment and supporting infrastructure such as cooling systems and lighting.

It’s vital to measure energy for several reasons:

Power is a Data Center’s most precious resource: The small form factor and big energy demands of today’s high performance servers mean most Data Centers will run out of power well before cabinet space or cooling. Even if you aren’t interested in green considerations, measuring energy usage is critical to understand the true capacity of the room.

Power is the common element among disparate Data Center subsystems: Air handlers, servers, and overhead lighting are all different infrastructure of a Data Center — so different that they’re each installed and maintained by personnel that are trained in separate disciplines — yet they all need power to function. Measuring energy consumption creates a common standard by which you can tell how much they’re each drawing upon your overall Data Center capacity.

Power consumption largely defines a Data Center’s environmental impact: The amount of power that a Data Center uses on a day-to-day basis determines how much irreplaceable fossil fuels it consumes and the quantity of carbon emissions it is responsible for.

Because of these conditions, green Data Center improvements that conserve energy provide some of the largest benefits to your business. Measuring power in your Data Center is, therefore, also the best way to appraise that value and understand the real impact of those green improvements.

Carbon Footprint

Another benchmark of a Data Center’s environmental impact is its carbon footprint — the amount of carbon dioxide produced as part of the ongoing operation of the facility.

Carbon dioxide is one of a handful of substances dubbed greenhouse gases that trap heat from the sun and warm the Earth. (Water vapor is the most common greenhouse gas, followed by carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons.)

That warming effect is necessary to a certain degree. Without it, the Earth’s mean surface temperature would be –2 degrees Fahrenheit (–19 degrees Celsius) rather than today’s 57 degrees Fahrenheit (14 degrees Celsius).

Many scientists and environmentalists today are concerned that human activity is causing such problems, prompting them and various government agencies worldwide to call for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. Although carbon dioxide occurs naturally — people, animals, and plants all produce it; volcanoes and hot springs emit it as well — carbon is also a byproduct of burning fossil fuels.

More than 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, for example, are energy-related carbon dioxide — originating from the combustion of petroleum, coal, and natural gas — according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The links from energy production to carbon dioxide to climate change mean that the less energy your Data Center uses, the smaller its impact upon the environment.

The other factor in a server environment’s carbon footprint is the makeup of the electricity powering the facility. Several sources of energy are used to create electricity, and each generates a different amount of carbon dioxide. Turning coal into electricity produces more carbon dioxide than natural gas, for instance, so your Data Center will have a larger carbon footprint if your regional power company provides electricity derived from coal rather than natural gas. Cleaner energy sources, such as nuclear or hydroelectric power, create minimal amounts of carbon dioxide, so any Data Center powered by those sources, either directly or by way of a utility provider, will have an even smaller carbon footprint.

Carbon Offsets

One strategy for dealing with carbon emissions is to employ carbon offsets, measures that reduce carbon dioxide. In simple terms, you compensate for the amount of carbon that you (or in this case, your Data Center) generate by sponsoring a project that prevents an equal amount from being created.

Examples of carbon offsets include

Providing a source of renewable energy, such as biofuels, hydroelectric, solar, or wind power

Planting trees, which serve as natural carbon sinks

Capturing and eliminating more potent greenhouse gases, such as methane produced by landfills or pollutants (that is, hydrofluorocarbons or perfluorocarbons) created during industrial processes

Although it’s possible to directly introduce carbon-offsetting measures at your Data Center facility — building a wind farm on land that you own, for example — the more common approach is to pay an environmental organization to do the activity.

Other Data Center Elements

Energy usage and carbon footprint are the features most commonly discussed and measured to determine how green a data center is is; however, other elements warrant attention as well. Other green details to consider include the following:

Generator emissions: Standby generators, used to keep a Data Center running when commercial power fails, consume fuel when in operation and can emit a range of pollutants including nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and particulate matter.

Water consumption: Major Data Centers consume millions of gallons/liters of water per month through standard cooling processes as hot water is vaporized from a Data Center’s cooling tower and has to be replaced. (Water used to replace what has evaporated is known as makeup water.) Although this consumption hasn’t received the same level of attention from governments and the public in recent years as energy use and carbon emissions, removing such large amounts of water from local supplies is a tremendous environmental impact.

Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world.

Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum

 

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: Articles, Data Center Cooling, Data Center Power, Data Center Solutions Tagged With:

Data center efficiency-Is it size dependent?

November 9, 2012 By

Data centers for a long time have taken their own stand when questioned about the efficiency of operations. Some data centers follow the conventional methods of strategy implementation while the others take a different route. For example, Google has adopted custom built servers and batteries, Facebook uses a unique evaporative cooling method to save power, and Yahoo has adopted an outdoor cooling design.

Data centers can be generally divided into two primary classes based on size that is the large data centers and the small data centers. Large data centers have an inherent advantage in implementing energy efficient strategies as they can shift operations to another facility as and when the situation demands. It could be a failure in the data center or an expansion plan adhering to all energy saving norms.

“Large centers can operate at a higher risk of failure with the offset, but smaller data centers can’t do that as easily,” said Fluegeman, who specializes in facilities, power and cooling, and is also the principal engineer with PlanNet Consulting.

“It’s following the sun or the moon, because they can very easily shift their traffic to different locations depending on whether it’s night or day in a particular location,” he said. “Especially if you’re using outside air and free cooling or air-side economy as it’s called, this is a concept that’s used to some degree by larger companies with data centers worldwide, where they shift traffic.”

In the case of smaller data centers (data centers that lack the infrastructure and resources of its larger counterparts) energy efficiency strategy implementation along with reducing costs is a difficult task.

So how does one cope with such a scenario?

According to Fluegeman, three quintessential parameters to be followed by a small data center are-

Design of the IT structure: it is essential to design the data center in a way that it helps in consolidation of the files. For example using file duplication or compression. This would automatically reduce the amount of space required for the storage of files. Enterprises can modify or make alterations to the network configurations from their own data centers as well as allowing the users to access data from anywhere at any time.

“There are ways to architect your system to deal with duplication and keep things lean and mean and trim with good housekeeping,” he said. “This allows data centers to be smaller and greener by using as little power as possible.”

Tiered storage can be used as another remedial measure: with this files are stored in servers, and the servers run on sleep mode. The files can be pulled up or retrieved only when necessary, thus saving a lot of power.

Restructuring the cooling method: It is imperative that small scale enterprise data centers make use of hot and cold aisle containment for data center cooling. This is to ensure that hot air is isolated from the cold air. But the crucial aspect of this design is to keep the hot air from nixing with the cold air. This would create a 30 degree difference in the temperature of the data center, says Fleugeman.

One way is to line up the servers such that the front faces one direction and the exhaust side faces the back. This forms the hot aisle and the cold aisle. Another way of doing this, in case of parallel arrangement of servers is to stack servers with alternate hot and cold aisles. Front faces of two servers face each other while the back faces the front of another line of servers

Use uninterrupted power supply to reduce excessive power costs: The use of the UPS is a radical transformation in the deployment of energy efficient measures. UPS is normally used when there is a power outage, but this can be prove to be an advantage for data centers as UPS wakes up from the sleep mode only when the power fails.

The difference in power drop and the UPS turning back on is so minimal that the equipments fail to pick up the drop in power and continue to operate continuously.

Switching to higher voltage equipments can result in a lot of power savings since it is more efficient and the physical conductors are smaller.

“If you look at power lines on big poles on the hill side, those wires are small- they’re far apart, but the power voltage is very high,” he said. “This is being applied to data centers now. Higher voltage is slightly more dangerous and in the U.S we have a lot more attorneys. That’s what keeps voltage lower, in my personal opinion.”

 

Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world.

Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: Articles, Data Center Cooling, Data Center Management, Data Center Power, Data Center Solutions Tagged With: ,

FACTORS OF MEASUREMENT FOR A GREEN DATA CENTER

November 8, 2012 By

 

Managing a data center efficiently is a tough task. After taking the green plunge too, it is necessary that one measures the efficiency of those buildings.  This is because, to be completely efficient one needs to know at what rate does the data center use up the resources provided, what type of byproducts it is generating and most importantly how green it actually is.

Why fix something that is not broken?

People might take all that poking and prodding to find out the efficiency rate to be an exhaustive process.  But data center managers should remember that measuring certain parameters will help them understand their data center better. Based on these measurements, the managers can opt of upgrades and appropriate resources for the data center. It also helps them assess the success and growth rate accurately. It is shocking to find out that despite of its very important nature, many enterprises completely avoid the process. Surveys of more than 1,500 Data Center owners and operators at Datacenter Dynamics conferences in 2008 indicate that fewer than one in three were using Data Center efficiency metric and fewer than half definitely intended to use them in the future.

But what should we measure?

Now that the importance of measuring the efficiency has bee established, one needs to measure the right parameters so that those can aid in quantifying the impact of the various upgrades which are incorporated to make the data center green. Let us look at those pointers and try to understand why measuring them is important:

Power:

The data center runs on power and that’s what makes it the most important resources which needs measuring. Doing so will answer all queries, and will help one figure out the accurate rate of consumption of energy by the IT equipments, the lighting systems and the Cooling center.

It is pertinent to remember that power consumption is the most expensive operational cost of the data center.  If one measures the exact usage rate of this resource, then they will be able to save energy and capital by making necessary improvements.

Footprint:

Here, it means the carbon footprint. As we all know, carbon traps heat and if this is left unchecked, then it can hamper the temperature balance of the data centers. Carbon emission is largely man-made. This factor needs to be checked out because it has a domino effect on the working of a data center. Think about it, increase in temperature means the cooling units would work harder to maintain the temperature of the data center by consuming more power thereby decreasing the overall efficiency.

Battery rooms:

The generators in the battery room which start up in case of a power failure emit a ton of pollutants including gases like nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide. Measuring and keeping a tab on the power consumption of the generators give a clear picture about the data center’s health report.

Hot air emission:

Hot air comes with the territory but a clear pathway is absolutely essential to make sure that it is disposed properly. This is crucial as this hot air, if left unattended would be re-circulated in the data center thereby increasing the temperature. Measuring the efficiency rate of the cooling units will let one gain insights how effectively is the hot air disposed and also will help them make a better decision in case an upgrade is required.

Water intake:

Needless to say, cooling tower requires gallons of water on a monthly basis and the water used also needs to be replaced.  This measurement has not been seriously considered, but it plays a pivotal role towards determining how green the data center is. Removing gallons of water from the local supplies has a huge impact on the environment on the whole and should not be ignored.

Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world.

Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: Articles, Green IT Tagged With: ,

ELEMENTS OF EVALUATION FOR GREEN DATA CENTER COMPETENCE

October 29, 2012 By

There’s an often-used management dictum that says you can’t manage what you don’t measure, and it certainly applies to data centers.

It is important for data center technicians to understand the capacity and resources required to operate a data center facility as it is the prime most factor to understand about the consumption of these resources. Consumption of resources and the quantity of byproducts the data centers produce are proof to how much green the building is. The reason to measure data center efficiency is quite obvious. But the data centers in reality don’t seem to take notice of this radical necessity.

Elements to measure in a data center

After understanding the importance of measurement of critical elements in a data center, it is important to take note of the individual elements, and their impact on various other upgrades.

The Energy Factor: Energy is the primary element that needs to be monitored in a data center. Effective monitoring of energy should be capable of answering questions like- How much energy does the facility house, and how much energy is consumed by the IT equipment and other ancillary devices like cooling systems and lighting.

It is vital to measure energy for several reasons-

  • Power is a data center’s most valuable resource: The big energy demands of today’s high performance servers means most data centers will run out of power well before cabinet space or cooling. Even if you aren’t interested in green considerations, measuring energy usage is critical to understand the true capacity of the room.
  • Power is the common element among disparate data center subsystems: Air handlers, servers, and overhead lighting are all different infrastructure of a data center, so different that they’re each installed and maintained by personnel trained in separate disciplines, yet they all need power to function. Measuring energy consumption creates a common standard by which you can tell how much they’re each drawing upon your overall data center capacity.
  • Power consumption is the most expensive overhead cost of a data center: By measuring the specific energy usage of various data center components and applying the regional cost of electricity, you should be able to calculate the total monthly expenses of the components. This enables you to target which data center subsystems have the potential to save energy and money through energy efficiency programs.
  • Power consumption largely defines a data center’s environmental impact: The amount of power that a data center uses on a day-to-day basis determines how much irreplaceable fossil fuels it consumes and the quantity of carbon emissions it is responsible for.

Because of these four conditions, green data center improvements that conserve energy provide some of the largest benefits to your business. Measuring power in your data center is, therefore, also the best way to appraise that value and understand the real impact of those green improvements.

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: Articles, Data Center Solutions, Green IT Tagged With: ,

NORTH CAROLINA- ABODE TO SOME MASSIVE DATA CENTERS

October 25, 2012 By

Several interviews with the internet officials of top notch IT companies, hardware vendors, and economic development groups have been conducted to understand the reason behind North Carolina being a favorite destination for data centers. Investigations reveal some really economically feasible reasons for North Carolina to be adjudged as a major hub for data centers.

Facebook was the first of the other internet majors to set up a data center in the region of North Carolina. If you live on the East coast, and log into Facebook, there are fair number of chances that you know the comments, posts, likes are all being served up by this data center in the forest city of North Carolina.

Facebook is not the only internet major to have built a server farm amidst the forest area of North Carolina. It is not the only one to have chosen North Carolina as home to some of its main server farms. Within a hundred mile radius, Apple and Google have established their data centers. Walt Disney, Wipro, AT&T are some of the other companies to ventured into North Carolina in search of a suitable place for their data centers.

Companies need to analyze several different factors when deciding the location for their data centers. It is in fact a complex decision, and requires a perfect understanding of the conditions, and requirements. Vice President of site operations, Facebook had expressed in an interview that the company looks at 50 different factors before picking a site for its data centers. Analysts say that Microsoft looks at 43 crucial factors before data center venue selection.

This decision has become complex over the years with companies looking at cleaner, greener power sources, and the ever increasing population of internet users. In addition, there is a notion that web scale computing has changed the way servers are built, and hence require a different scale of design. This adds to the already existing woe of data center location hunt.

Why is North Carolina a hotspot for data centers?

Low cost of power: The Duke Energy person, Mr. Thomas William in an interview said that North Carolina offers 4 cents against 6 cents for every kilowatt hour of power. This is very less compared to the average U.S. energy costs. The reason behind the low cost offering of power in North Carolina is that the power here is a mix of 61 percent coal, 31% nuclear power, and only 4% clean power. Coal and nuclear power are some of the cheapest sources of energy generation.

Power transmission capacity: It is very difficult for such massive sized data centers to even find a place capable of transmitting huge amounts of power. The area around North Carolina has most of this place already built out. With the textile industry and furniture industries increasingly moved offshore, North Carolina provides sufficient industrial capacity.

Rural areas: In North Carolina, most of the neighborhood localities are rural. This makes the plots relatively inexpensive. It is not prone to problems and hassles from the nearby communities. The plots are suitable for the installment of huge power stations and buildings.

These are just some of the reasons for the buzz around North Carolina and its data centers. The other reasons include

Incentives and company friendly policies by the state government

  • Abundant supply of water
  • Fast and hassle free deployment of equipments
  • Fast East coast internet traffic
  • Close proximity to the airport, and a major city
  • Conducive climate for operations

Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world.

Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: Articles, Data Center Design, Data Center Insights Tagged With: ,

DATA CENTERS AND POWER CONSUMPTION

October 18, 2012 By

An article in the New York Times carried reports on the enormous amount of energy usage and wastage by data centers across the world. The data centers were infuriated looking at the negative tone and impact that this article was likely to cause. The Forbes magazine came out strong on these allegations, and in support with the data centers listed in the article. Google and Facebook seemed to be on top of the New York Times energy wastage hit list.

On the contrary, it is unfair to just blame the newspaper for the supposedly baseless allegations. Yes, it has missed out on some important facts like the energy efficiency programs imbued by these centers in their facilities. Without sidelining the facts revealed by the newspaper; it can definitely add some spotlight into the amount of resources that these data centers are quietly consuming.

Data centers require energy and power to provide the necessary online services to its end users and clients. It is a different story for the end user to understand when data centers talk about energy consumption. The contemptuous energy wastage by data centers is of least importance or rather hidden from the end user.

Data center operators look for low cost, reliable, and sustainable energy resources when choosing a site to establish a data center. Only when the operations start, do they realize the amount needed (which drastically rises with new service additions), and the energy saving norms that they need to adhere to. Data centers operate full time on full capacity irrespective of their needs. Some servers have found to be operating on a stand-by mode for several months in a row. Data center operators feel the constraint of not being able to fix the problem. This ultimately leads to significant energy wastage.

Operators carry preconceived notions of operating the facility at full blast to enhance their performance irrespective of the massive energy demands. Energy wastage is the only outcome of such audacity.

Air conditioning facilities at data centers are turned on for long hours to keep the servers at a much cooler temperature than needed. Lighting facilities are a major hindrance to the power saving objective.

Looking at these factors, it would in a way be right to say that NYT article has made a conscious effort in annihilating energy wastage.

The article was capable of bringing about some stunning revelations about the data center industry, and not to forget the radical changes in conservation. Facebook’s North Carolina data center has been on top of the list of energy efficient data centers. Microsoft has been touted to remove all the diesel generators used for lighting from its facilities, and replace them with natural lighting (during the day of course) or renewable energy coupled devices.

The top notch companies like Google, eBay, Go Daddy, Apple, Yahoo have pledged to forego exhaustive sources of energy and deploy energy efficient programs. Artificial air conditioning systems are being replaced with natural cooling from outside (keeping the demographic conditions of the region in mind) or some sort of indirect evaporative air handlers.

However, the Internet industry has made and is making some fastidious efforts in reducing their carbon emissions and carbon footprint. The objective of embracing green technologies, to an extent, has been achieved.

Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world.

Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: Articles, Data Center Cooling, Data Center Power, Data Center Solutions Tagged With: , ,

LIGHTING FOR A GREEN DATA CENTER

October 10, 2012 By

Data centers require some mission-critical support systems to maintain the redundancy and reliability of operations. Reliability and accountability are the two main buzz words for any data center. For the efficient maintenance of these two operatives several factors need to be given more prominence. Apart from the computing and installation considerations, most important is the design of the data center layout. Most of the energy supplied to the data centers are used by the power and cooling sectors.

Internet connections, continuously operating air conditioning systems, back-up power systems, and high security systems cause considerable energy requirements in data centers.

Reduction in the usage of power or nullifying the effects of wastage of energy is on the top list of priorities for any data center managing firms. Considering the recent controversy of data center contribution to energy wastage, and the scrutiny of all data centers for the above reason, it has created a stir in the data center industry. Data centers are vying hard to be in the top of the Green Data Center hit list.

Natural lighting- an effort to reduce carbon footprint

Natural lighting in data centers plays a major role in addressing the environmental sustainability. This effort also reduces overhead operating costs. The main aim of deploying such measures is to reduce the environmental footprint while managing facilities, and ensuring the right usage of the natural resources.

Sunlight can be of immense use when it comes to the lighting of data centers. All that is needed is good ventilation to the room. The right design of the room keeping in mind the harvesting of natural resources does the job.

Data centers run at full capacity during the daytime. It would not be feasible to use artificial lights for very long hours. This would in turn raise the costs of operation and maintenance. When there is sufficient sunlight available, it definitely makes sense to harness this resource.

During the night, since, sunlight is not available, a little bit of effort can solve even this crisis. There are a few unique equipments available which can resolve the crunch of lighting, if not the entire power crisis.

Environment friendly lighting systems

  • Installation of photovoltaic cells which convert light into electrical energy is a fantastic idea to light up the center.
  • Solar panels effectively harness solar energy; they can be used for lighting purposes or heating purposes.
  • Solar panels cater to a large percentage of hot-water needs, and power requirements. Over time panels will reduce the data center’s carbon emissions.
  • It can also be used as an alternative to non-renewable fuels for standby generators.
  • Using efficient LED systems and lighting controls can considerably save energy.
  • LED lighting is effective because of its low heat output.
  • Low temperature LED lighting has the ability to reduce HVAC loads. HVAC is the largest electrical load on a data center.
  • Fluorescent lighting is another alternative save-energy system which can be used for lighting and cool running air conditioning systems.
  • Natural lighting has been proved to reduce stress and improve mood. Hence contributing to the performance of the workforce in the data center.
  • Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world.
  • Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum
Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: Featured News, News Tagged With: , , , ,

Cleaning Up Data Centers with a Fuel Cell

July 11, 2012 By

Data centers have now grown into a new nation by themselves. According to a report by Greenpeace in April, the energy consumed to run centers is higher than the annual power consumption of some of the developed nations like Germany and Canada.

There is no doubt that data centers consume a tremendous amount of energy, considering the prevalent energy crisis the world is facing; their dependence on fossil fuels for energy poses a huge threat to human life.

This very threat has forced many at Silicon Valley to go back to their drawing boards and develop alternative solutions to meet the ever growing demand for energy to power data centers. Efficient energy utilization and use of renewable sources to power is the primary objective of the action plan.

Apart from energy crisis being the major issue with data centers, reducing the expenses incurred is also a major objective.

With many diverse problems to be addressed developing an efficient system that addressed all the issues was a herculean task.

The hydrogen fuel cell commercially known as the “Bloom Energy Server” has significantly solved most of the problems that data centers face in terms of energy crisis. Water vapor being the bi-product of the electrolysis process, they have high “green quotient” rating compared to any of the conventional batteries.

Hydrogen fuel cell is predicted to be the environmentally safest energy reservoir for meeting the ever growing energy demands of human world. The operation of a simple hydrogen fuel cell is completely self-sustained. It uses hydrogen and oxygen in their ionic form. A hydrogen fuel cell consists of a solar panel which generates electricity to split the hydrogen atom into H+ ions. These ionic compounds are stored in a separate chamber. Oxygen atoms are also obtained in their ionic state and stored in specially designed chambers. The chemical reaction between the ionic H+ and O2- ions generate electricity with water vapor as the bi-product.

Since water vapor is the bi-product, it causes zero pollution. Hence, it has become one of the most sought after technologies in an energy deprived world.

This technology is not just confined to the Bloom Energy Server, but several automobiles which run on fossil fuels have now switched to hydrogen fuel cells as their energy source. Toyota has pioneered the technology with the launch of green hybrid vehicles which have significantly reduced global warming caused by vehicle emissions. Hydrogen being the primary fuel for powering fuel cells, many developed nations has setup the necessary infrastructure to refill hydrogen gas cylinders, which has only emphasized that this will be The Technology to all the energy deprived nation.

Many organizations have successfully installed the bloom energy server. E-commerce giants such as eBay have successfully transformed their data centers into 100% renewable energy powered centers. Bloom has worked to help Google achieve both its economic and environmental goals, assuring that the 400kW installation on Google’s main campus delivers clean and affordable power. Over the first 18 months the project has had 98% availability and delivered 3.8 million kWh of electricity.

Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world.

Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon
Filed Under: Data Center Management, Data Center Power Tagged With: , ,
« Older Posts