by Shane Henson — December 21, 2012—Digital Realty Trust Inc., Vigilent Corporation, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have released the results of a joint study designed to assess whether a fan speed control system is a viable solution to improve energy efficiency within commercial data centers.
For the study, the entities used a 135,000-square-foot data center located in El Segundo, California that was designed, owned and operated by Digital Realty. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory monitored the overall effort, creating the baseline and result metrics, and acted as project manager for the energy efficiency grant awarded by the California Energy Commission’s PIER Program, it says.
Per the entities’ report, Demonstration of Intelligent Control and Fan Improvements in Computer Room Air Handlers, the project focused on replacing constant speed scroll fans with electronically commutated motor variable speed fans of a more efficient design and deploying the Vigilent Intelligent Energy Management system to control fan speeds and computer room air handler output.
According to the report, the deployment of Vigilent’s software system combined with changes to the data center operations resulted in a 66 percent drop in cooling energy usage at Digital Realty’s El Segundo facility, freeing stranded capacity while simultaneously expanding reserve cooling capacity. In addition, the software provided visibility into data center thermal conditions, which led to additional energy savings as well as a significantly improved temperature distribution. Furthermore, says Vigilent, the El Segundo facility’s power usage effectiveness was improved by 8 percent to 1.46; 2.9 million kilowatt hours will be saved annually; and greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide will be reduced by 1.9 million pounds per year as a result of the software and data center improvements.
