UPDATED 06:14 EDT / AUGUST 02 2011

Is the Recession or Clean Tech to Blame for Lower Energy Consumption in Datacenters?

Every service we use through a connected device has a back end and a support system–simply put, somewhere there’s  a room of servers supporting every action, every email and banking transaction.  And the amount of power to make all that happen smoothly was estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of kilowatt hours, and billions of dollars to support that  power consumption.  It turns out, the numbers have been overestimated–the recession and technology are said to be the main factors in the lower than expected growth in energy use in the United States over the last five years.

The EPA released a report in 2007 that estimated data center energy use would double over the time period covering 2005 to 2010.   That did not happen, and the reasons why are now being explored to see which  of the two was the real reason–the recession or technology?

The tech that is used in data centers has more to do with the energy grab not being as large as estimated, and it remains to be seen if this is the real reason, but the cost savings to our country in the midst of so many monetary and economic issues may not be a totally bad thing.

Technology and its implementation also has much to do with the power needs being less than estimated, Dell has taken strides in lowering energy costs by certifying some of their servers for “fresh air cooling.”

“Dell said Thursday it will warranty servers to run at 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius) for a limited number of hours per year, so that customers can make wider use of “fresh-air cooling” in their data centers.

“Most big data centers use chillers, big mechanical pieces of equipment that provide cold water for cooling. By contrast, fresh-air cooling is an emerging technique that draws outside air into the data center, filters it and uses that to cool the IT gear,” according to a PCworld report.

This development is one good reason why a lot of the energy costs may not be as much as estimated. Brands are getting on board with saving costs on computing. Dell making a move like this will most likely have an influence other hardware providers which will  push energy savings further across the board.  And others are hoping to influence datacenters in a similar manner.  IBM and EMC are both supporters of green tech when it comes to servers and datacenters, launching a few initiatives across the globe.  AMD and HP are also highly active in this space as well, while Zenoss leverages data analytics to monitor data centers in order to help them run more efficiently with regards to things like temperature and server interaction.

In this light, it seems the debate over whether or not the economy or technology is the real reason behind lower energy consumption is a moot one, but it’s important to continue conversations around this topic.  For some companies, incorporating energy efficiency is a key proponent of their server offering, giving them a unique position in the market.  Cost savings has been a huge selling factor, likely more so than environmental benefits given the current recession, but either way a number of companies are marketing themselves around both aspects, hoping to gain new customers through budget and eco-consciousness.


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