Data centres are starting to get a lot attention when it comes to making them more efficient. Roughly 60% of the electricity used at a data centre goes to keeping the servers cool. HP has just opened the world's first wind-cooled data centre, and it's the company's most efficient data centre to date.
The data centre is located in northeast England, and is 100% air cooled with eight 2.1-meter stainless steel and plastic fans that suck cold air from outside into the building, where it then runs through filters and into the data centre through the floors.
A few other tricks HP has utilised includes using light colour server racks that better reflect light and drop the need for additional lighting by 40%, and the building has tanks for harvesting rainwater, which can be used to humidify the air cycling into the building when needed.
With this system the data centre are kept at about 75 degrees. Even running at full load.
It's no wonder companies are competing so fiercely for the most efficient data center - coming this summer Energy Star will start auditing and certifying the top 25% of data centres with the best efficiency levels.