Planetoverhaul.com

Consider this…

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the electricity usage of data centers, those burning rooms where stacks of computers are stored, will double to 120 billion kilowatt-hours by 2011. That would make the data center industry the single largest user of energy in the US.

But it gets even better for green business. Just to avoid the point where the computers start to malfunction due to intense heat, data center cooling solution costs will soon overtake the costs of the IT infrastructure itself.
Typically, 40-60% of the annual electric bill of data centers goes to the cooling systems for IT equipment such or for conditioning and chillers. It’s currently a $6-billion industry. But according to Peter Christy of the Internet Research Group, data center economics have completely “flipped” in the last few years.
“In many cases ‘IT’—the servers, storage and networking—no longer is the big cost component – it’s now the power and cooling to run the IT,” Christy said.

What is the point of all this?
It means that as the IT age, especially through the Internet, continues to dazzle mankind with the wonders of technology, the invisible infrastructure that supports this known as “cloud computing”—the servers, the mainframes, data centers—will need a lot more green solutions.

Two issues are involved. The first is that we cannot go around relying on fossil fuel power sources in cooling computers. Someday, data centers will have to rely 100% on renewable energy for its power needs. But meanwhile, a more energy efficient cooling system might bridge the gap.
Second, the more we use fossil fuels, the more we use water. Steam turbines are still mankind’s most common energy-generating machines. It’s what oil and gas boils so the steam can run the turbine that’s connected to an electricity generator.

Comes now Core4 Systems with a new announcement for its next-generation computer room air-conditioning (CRAC), air handling units (AHU) and chiller systems.
What does Core4 offer? The company promises an average efficiency of rating of 1.25, where current offerings are 2.25. The ideal efficiency rate is 1. In money terms, it’s a difference between spending $0.44 per hour for cooling and less than $0.11 per hour after using Core4.

Here’s what Core4 further has to say:

A typical 100-ton water-cooled data center consumes 1.2 million gallons of water per year at the onsite facility. This can double depending on cycle concentration rates in cooling towers. Consequently, a 100-ton data center consuming 1.7 million kWh per year for cooling on average requires 3.2 million gallons of water for the cooling load at the power plant. With a Core4 data center-cooling infrastructure, water consumption can be drastically reduced to 900,000 gallons at the power plant per year due to the total energy savings.

Today it’s green cooling for the data centers. Tomorrow, it’s complete green energy for cloud computing. Call it the Green Cloud.