• Reddit
• Digg
• Facebook
• MySpace
• del.icio.us
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Furl
• Newsvine
• Google Bookmarks

Copy and Paste This Permanent Link:http://www.distributedenergy.com/january-february-2009/the-green-machine.aspx

You may also be interested in...

Photo: IBM Global Technology Services

In the world of information technology (IT), data centers are the backbone of infrastructure, providing powerful servers and storage systems that run business critical technologies such as software applications, e-mail, and Web sites for businesses and other organizations (financial services, media, universities, government, health care, high-tech markets, and such). Data centers accommodate a paper-to-digital shift in the economy and, as such, are in a major growth period in response to the increased demand for data processing and storage.

That demand is driven by an increased use of electronic transactions in financial services, such as online banking and electronic trading, an explosion in the use of Internet communication and entertainment, a shift to electronic medical records for health care, growth in global commerce, and the use of satellite navigation and electronic shipment tracking in transportation.

It’s a powerful industry that consumes a lot of energy as well, to sustain its operations. The EPA reports that data centers have doubled the amount of energy used in the past five years. According to the federal agency, data centers consumed 61 billion kWh in 2006, representing 1.5% of total US electricity consumption at a cost of about $4.5 billion. That’s more electricity than is used by the nation’s television sets and similar to the electricity consumption of 5.8 million average US households, according to the EPA.

IBM owns and operates more data center space—8 million square feet—than any other company worldwide. Cognizant of the escalating cost of doing business globally, and an increasing emphasis on corporate sustainability and growing environmental concerns, the company this summer unveiled what it’s calling “The Green Machine” in Boulder, CO, billed as the “most technologically advanced, energy-efficient” data center ever constructed. The Boulder green data center consists of 115,000 square feet, including 70,000 square feet of raised floor space. It is part of a $350-million, 125,000-square-foot project that includes hardware, software, 2,000 square feet of renovated existing data center space, 8,000 square feet of data center expansion, and a fourth utility plant.

Photo: IBM Global Technology Services Boulder's Green data center - which hosts many key customer accounts - utilizes IBM Research technologies to create energy efficiencies.

No sooner was the Boulder facility open for business than IBM announced the construction of a sister green data center in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina, scheduled to open in summer 2009. The $360-million, state-of-the-art data center is expected to deliver new technologies and services to clients, allowing them to access information and services from any device. Just as with the Boulder facility, the RTP campus will focus on energy efficiencies. The new RTP center will be the first in the world to be constructed using IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center design principles.

“Two years ago, if you were to measure a data center, roughly a third of the power that comes into the data center went to IT equipment,” says Chris Molloy, a Distinguished Engineer with IBM in Raleigh, NC. “A third of that came to cooling equipment, and then a third was for electrical distribution.”

Molloy says with new green technologies, up to 75% of the power coming into the Boulder data center will go to the IT equipment, and a reduced percentage will be used for cooling. According to the EPA, the power and cooling infrastructure that supports IT equipment in data centers accounts for 50% of data centers’ total consumption.

Boulder’s green data center—which hosts many key customer accounts—utilizes IBM Research technologies to create energy efficiencies. The total mechanical system design is 40% more efficient than one with heat exchangers for free cooling, with an expected carbon dioxide emissions reduction of 6,550 tons with expandable capacity to meet future technology requirements, according to IBM.

Initiatives include: 

• The use of Boulder’s geographic location. This enables the data center to switch to a free-cooling mode that uses a water economizer to substantially reduce energy consumption when outside temperature and humidity levels are favorable. “In the Boulder facility, we expect free-cooling to be capable roughly 50% of the year and maybe a few percentages less in the RTP data center,” says Molloy. “Air/water side economizers are the major technologies that cause a significant increase in power going to IT versus going to cooling.”
• Deriving part of its power through alternative energy sources. This includes more than 1 million kWh per year of wind-powered electricity purchased by IBM, which is expected to reduce carbon dioxide production by two million pounds annually. Xcel Energy, the power supplier to the Boulder facility, was looking to build a wind farm and approached IBM about purchasing some of the wind power. “IBM has a strategy for increasing its renewable energy sources around the world as they power data centers, which is a combination of—like in Boulder—buying direct energy, or through energy certificates,” says Molloy. “Raleigh and Boulder have existing facilities, and, at RTP in Raleigh, we already have a history of buying energy certificates.”
• A balancing of cooling capacities to the actual load of air-conditioning systems. Through variable-speed pumps and motors, this reduces energy use and cost. Molloy explains that the technology is akin to turning a car on during a hot summer day; the air-conditioner goes full blast, and, as it approaches the set temperature, the fan—as well as the cooling—starts cutting down. “That’s what this technology is all about: variable speed as it reaches the thermostat temperature, adjusts the fan, which, therefore, adjusts the amount of energy, as opposed to a wall unit air-conditioner in a house which is on/off with no thermostat,” says Molloy. “The data centers of old had on/off; over the last several years, the technology has improved with variable speed motors and thermostats.”
• Water taps for water-cooled IT equipment such as the IBM Power6 technology. Molloy says most data centers are cooled with air-based cooling similar to air-conditioners that use water to create the cool air. “But they then blow the cool air, and that’s where raised floors in data centers came from,” he says. “What we are seeing now is a shift back to what we had 20 years ago—actually bringing the liquid cooling closer to the equipment either in row or within the physical piece of hardware. Even though we still line the computer rooms with air-conditioners and blow cold air underneath the floor using best practices such as hot and cold aisles, we also are starting to bring some of that air-conditioning to the equipment, and we run it using those water taps to bring water into the aisle. Some equipment will have water connections associated with that. One of the differences between Boulder and RTP that we learned over the last year is, instead of evenly distributing the power to erase wear, we started looking at high-density zones, which have different liquid cooling characteristics. We’re bringing more liquid cooling to the higher-density zones to cool it than we would normally do with air.”
•  Energy-efficient lighting.
• High R-value insulation.
• Thirty-five new trees planted around the facility.
• The use of low-sulfur fuels to reduce emissions from backup generators. The generators come online in under 30 seconds. IBM’s Boulder facility systems are fully redundant and supported by 48-hour onsite fuel storage. “Because these are highly resilient data centers, in addition to the utility power, they have uninterruptible power supplies, or UPS, batteries that not only smooth power that comes from the utility service, but also take in-should there be a disruption of utility service,” says Molloy. “Those batteries last for several minutes with sufficient time for generators to start and stabilize. The low-sulfur fuel technology is used to run the generators, and that is more environmentally friendly than traditional diesel fuel.”

The new data centers are part of IBM’s Project Big Green, a $1-billion, energy efficiency initiative designed to respond to global businesses’ escalating energy costs, environmental concerns, and corporate sustainability requirements. According to the EPA, under current efficiency trends, national energy consumption by servers and data centers could nearly double again by 2011 to more than 100 billion kWh, for an annual energy cost of $7.4 billion. The peak load on the power grid from servers and data centers is estimated to be approximately 7 gigawatts, equivalent to the output of about 15 baseload power plants. Under current trends, the demand would rise to 12 gigawatts by 2011, requiring 10 additional power plants.

IBM had an eye to sustainability in constructing Boulder’s green data center. The center was a retrofit of an existing office building on the Boulder campus, reusing 98% of the building’s shell and recycling 65% of the building material, such as drywall, concrete, roofing, and flooring. Twenty-five percent of the newly purchased materials originated from recycled construction material products. IBM is seeking entry-level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification in one of its Boulder buildings. If accepted, it would be the first IBM data center to receive LEED certification.

“We have enough points for gold,” says Molloy. “The way you do that is you put enough points in so you can guarantee a level below that. We are looking for either Silver or Gold certification. Even though we looked at Platinum level, we were looking at technologies that had a five-year return or less. When you look at solar panels or some of the other promising technologies, those weren’t incorporated in the data center since we did have some financial cutoffs on the turn.”

Clients are favoring IBM’s approach—in the past year, 2,000 clients have asked the company for assistance in building 40 green data centers worldwide, leading them to save up to 50% in energy costs, according to IBM. As a result of green client engagements, IBM is reaping financial rewards, having garnered $300 million in new revenues in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Molloy says IBM offers consulting and project-based services that assist clients in data center assessment, including measuring the center on the Green Grid matrix and making tactical recommendations for improvement to helping them build new data centers.

In North Carolina, the Durham County Commission gave IBM a financial incentive for bringing economic opportunity to the area. “One of the significant things in the data center is its modularity,” says Molloy, adding that the Boulder center is 72,000 square feet.

Photo: IBM Global Technology Services The data centers have UPS batteries that smooth and take in the power from the utility - should there be a disruption in service.

“We learned to start small with the existing equipment power density, but be able to add additional power and cooling over time as equipment gets hotter and requires more power,” he notes. “That modularity is a key green concept that allows you to match the facilities’ requirement with the IT requirement. It provides a competitive edge for IBM, because a lot of other companies are building big data centers and putting in all the facilities’ equipment when they build it, which changes the financial model. As we’re bringing more efficient facilities’ equipment in all the time, it provides us a better financial picture.”

In North Carolina, IBM received $750,000 in economic development incentives from Durham County. The RTP facility will only bring 10 data center jobs to the area, but the multi-phase project is expected to have an economic value of close to $400 million not only for building the data center, but for the property tax associated with the equipment put in the data center, says Molloy.

According to Molloy, lessons learned from Boulder will be applied to RTP. He says the key lessons learned came through the data center’s modularity—“the ability to match. As you grow the IT, you grow the facility as well,” he says. “The second lesson has to do with implementing liquid cooling techniques, of which there are a variety.”

The first phase of the RTP project entails 60,000 square feet of raised floor data center space, setting the site up for potential expansion in standard modular increments. IBM will incorporate its High-Density Zone solution into the data center design-which supports water-cooled equipment and energy requirements and optimizes the infrastructure for traditional and new air-cooled equipment.

Other key design features being built into the RTP facility:

• Reuse of 95% of the original building’s shell, recycling 90% of the original building’s materials, and purchasing 20% of new material from recycled products
• The installation of high-density computing systems utilizing virtualization technology, which reduces energy costs by running multiple software applications on the same servers. Coupled with other energy-efficient technologies, it will give IBM clients up to three times more computing capacity per square foot than the average data center.
• A varying cooling requirements of the IT equipment in real time. In cold months, the data center will switch to free-cooling mode, utilizing a water economizer to dramatically reduce energy consumption.
• A mechanical system design slated to be 50% more efficient than the industry average, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 31,799 tons annually.
• Partial power to be obtained from alternative energy sources, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by one million pounds per year.
• The use of energy-efficient lighting

These technologies, in conjunction with the energy-efficient design and construction, will allow IBM to reduce its overall carbon footprint compared to standard data centers.

For its Boulder facility, IBM received more than $700,000 in incentives from the city of Boulder and Xcel Energy. IBM’s initiatives in Boulder are anticipated to result in a savings of 7.25 kWh in energy each year over previous equipment use, says Tom Henley, spokesperson for Xcel Energy.

“It helps keep energy prices down to meet customers’ energy needs for reliable and affordable energy,” says Henley. “When we reduce demand and energy consumption, we limit the need to produce energy on the open market. It’s also good for customers, because it reduces the payback for energy-saving improvements. It is our intent to increase our customers’ likelihood of choosing high-efficiency options. Energy-efficient equipment and energy management systems lower business energy costs and improve their profitability.” 

Henley praised IBM’s efforts as “good for the environment. Conservation is the easiest, most effective way to reduce impacts of energy on the environment,” he says.

Liz Hanson, business liaison for the city of Boulder’s economic vitality program, points out that IBM has been a global leader in IT for many decades and has maintained a strong business presence in Boulder since 1965. IBM received $100,000 in tax and fees rebates from Boulder for its green data center.

“IBM has had a great positive impact on the Boulder economy, and, by providing this incentive, it leverages other incentive dollars—including those from the state—for the green data center,” says Hanson. “Boulder investing in IBM helps IBM’s investment into Boulder. The center brings in more clients, strengthens that facility as part of IBM’s operation, and is a way to show them we value the priority they’re placing on the facility.”

Additionally, IBM received training incentives from Colorado. The state money is earmarked for workforce training assistance. Molloy references a new matrix produced by the Green Grid–Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency and a white paper industry consensus on how to measure the efficiency of the data centers.

“You are starting to see that the data centers being built today are twice as efficient from a power standpoint than data centers of three to five years ago when you talk about the amount of energy going to the actual IT equipment,” he says.

Going forward, IBM has a multi-year plan for sustainability, says Molloy. “When you have more than eight million square feet around the world, people wonder if that’s enough, too much, or not enough,” he says. “We look at how the growth pattern should occur over time, and that’s where this modularity becomes our supply-and-demand model and becomes extremely important.

“It takes a while to build these data centers,” he adds. “We‘re projecting out on our multi-year model based on historical demand, coupled with where our customers are asking for data center resources. We’re doing those projections to be able to have supply available to meet the demand when it occurs. We’re seeing resurgence in interest in outsourcing, because of the challenges associated with the phenomenal growth that customers are seeing in IT, coupled with the increase in energy costs that they would like to be given the ability to run an efficient green data center to people who do it extremely well, and IBM is the largest service provider. People are naturally looking to us to set the example for the industry.”