Sun Finishes Latest Energy-Efficient Data Center

January 27, 2009

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This week Sun Microsystems unveiled its new energy-efficient data center. Located in Broomfield, Colorado, the power and cooling technologies at this data center will help the company save over $1 million in electricity costs and about 11,000 tons in CO2 emissions every year – or enough energy to power about 1,000 homes every month.

Sun Microsystems has recently completely energy-efficient projects in the UK, India, and Santa Clara, CA. The new Broomfield design builds upon the Santa Clara project, which uses a water-saving system, chemical reduction plans, efficient air cooling, and energy-efficient servers. By upgrading computer hardware to be more efficient, the company has been able to reduce space and energy needs by 66 percent.

“As a company, we’ve achieved our first 20 percent reduction in electricity usage since 2002, and the Broomfield data center is a great step forward in meeting our goal of another 20 percent reduction,” said Dave Douglas, Sun Microsoft’s chief sustainability officer.

Earlier this year, Techmanic.com wrote about benchmarking data center energy costs; the EPA estimated that energy efficiency could save data centers billions of dollars. Google, Emerson, and other companies – with the help of consultants like EMC – have been taking the environment into account over the last few years due to this potential for savings.

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Barry | January 28th, 2009