Green is the Word

Hewlett-Packard Co. announced its new prefabricated design for data center construction, designed to radically reduce the time and cost involved in bringing a new facility online. Elsewhere, new investments commit to both solar thermal power generation and wind power.

Focal Points:

• HP announced a faster and less expensive manner of erecting new data centers this past week with its Flexible Data Center configuration. The Flexible Data Center uses prefabricated sheet metal to erect up to four 6,000 sq ft. data center quadrants built around a central operations center. The company says that its building block-style approach compares favorably to custom-built designs as it takes only one-third to one-half the time and one-half the cost. Admittedly, the company says the configurations may not be ideal for all data center scenarios, such as mission-critical platforms, and is aiming its approach at specific use cases. Among the company's targets are collocation companies, financial services firms, search providers, and other highly-virtualized environments where Intel-based x86 platforms are in high demand. This containerized approach relies on evaporative cooling systems and air handlers and forgoes chillers to eliminate cost. The data center is designed for a useful life of up to 15 years and quadrants can support 800 kilowatts (kW) of IT equipment.
• Solar thermal power generation received a big boost this week as Brightsource Energy, Inc. announced that it has raised an additional $150 million to build 14 power plants in the Southwestern U.S. The construction will occur generate an estimated 2,610 megawatts of energy when complete in 2016, and already has fulfillment contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Southern California Edison. The company had already received a $1.37 billion Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee to start construction on its Ivanpah, CA solar project later this year. In contrast to better-known photovoltaic (PV) solar systems, solar thermal energy uses a series of ground based mirrors to focus sunlight on a tower filled with liquid. The heated liquid turns into steam, which in turn drives a generator to deliver power. Google Inc. is one of many Brightsource backers.
• Google committed its business would be carbon neutral by the end of 2007 and has been working diligently to improve its operations efficiency, purchase renewable energy, and purchase carbon offsets to make up remaining deficits. As part of this initiative, the company has inked a 20-year agreement beginning on July 30 to buy 114 megawatts of wind power at an undisclosed fixed price from a new wind farm in Iowa from NextEra Energy Resources, LLC.  Google entered into a $38.8 million deal with NextEra in May to purchase energy from its wind farms in North Dakota. NextEra claims to have 9,000 wind turbines in operation in North America, capable of supply 7,600 megawatts of power. Purchases are being made through Google's Google Energy subsidiary, which was established as part of the company's plan to mediate sales of energy on the wholesale market.

Experton Group believes data center costs continue to escalate despite perpetual gains made in key measurements including business operation per dollar and terabyte per dollar. While many factors including workloads and storage requirements are complicit, Experton Group believes that poorly-optimized data center configurations and energy inefficient systems and operations are largely to blame. Google, HP, Microsoft Corp. and others have all trumpeted the benefits of different pre-optimized data center configurations. While these configurations may not be appropriate for all workload types and system architectures, the greater truth of viewing and planning for the data center as a whole is the key to ultimately optimizing infrastructure and exponentially improving efficiencies. The government is, and will continue, to invest in alternative energy sources and subsidizing energy-efficient data center and IT system acquisitions. IT executives that fail to capitalize on these opportunities are leaving significant monies on the table. In fact, Experton Group's new energy efficiency studies can demonstrate how aligning data center configurations with energy efficiency can reduce expenditures on a year-over-year basis. IT executives should adopt green strategies as a central measurement of data center performance not just for saving the planet, but also for saving scarce investment resources.