January 19, 2007—The growing use of large data centers, “the workhorses of the Internet,” is causing the US government, computer companies, and others to focus on energy efficiency, according to the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
President Bush signed a bill December 20 that requires the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to study the rapid growth and energy consumption of computer data centers. The study will examine the computer industry’s migration to more energy-efficient servers and analyze the potential impacts on costs, energy use, and performance of using more energy-efficient technologies, says EERE.
According to EERE, the study will examine current government incentives for energy efficient data centers and servers and will recommend potential incentives and voluntary programs that could promote their adoption. The study will also analyze the potential cost savings and benefits from the use of stationary fuel cells for backup power.
EERE notes that a number of recent industry activities have underscored the importance of data center energy efficiency:
- In November, California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) began offering rebates for data centers that employ software to make the best use of their server resources.
- In late November, Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced a new energy management system for data centers designed to save 20 to 45 percent in cooling costs.
- In December, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) issued new liquid cooling guidelines for data centers.
DOE has also been involved in data center energy efficiency in recent weeks, with EERE director Andy Karsner heading up a recent meeting with the Chief Technology Officers of major computer companies in California ‘s Silicon Valley . Representatives from AMD, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, and HP attended the meeting.
DOE says its Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has long been involved in data center energy efficiency, and recently helped launch two demonstration projects to examine the benefits of running data centers on direct-current (DC) power.
LBNL has also launched a Web site to help data center designers and operators achieve greater energy efficiency.
