With all the fuss around emerging technologies such as Big Data and hyperscale computing, it seems as if more mundane priorities such as data center power efficiency have fallen to the sidelines. In fact, the opposite is true.

General Motors recently open a multi-million dollar facility near its primary engineering center in Warren, Michigan. The building is home to two massive data halls that can hold up to 24 server clusters each, and the subfloor is lined with thousands of miles of cable. The complex will eventually house over 10,000 servers that will provide the horsepower for GM’s massive Oracle deployment and a new, custom Hadoop cluster. The twist is that the servers are not the feature-jammed proprietary boxes you’d expect to find in an enterprise data center. GM is using low-power, x86-based commodity servers that take after the machines Google and Facebook leverage in their own environments.

As it happens, Facebook is also doubling down on power consumption in an effort to reduce costs across the board. The social networking giant pumped $1.5 billion into “Project Catapult”, a 1.4 million square feet facility in Altoona, Iowa that will become “the most technologically advanced in the world” upon completion. Not much is known about the project, but sources say Facebook is seeking wind energy production tax credits. The fact that Facebook is one of the driving forces behind the hyperscale movement suggests that it has a few a few more efficiency rabbits in the hat.

Electricity a major consideration for every organization, including those that opt to rent space in a collocation center instead of setting up their own complexes. The New York Times quoted Cassidy Turley’s Scott Stein as saying that data center lease agreements have become “power deals.”