World’s Second-Largest Data Center Nabs LEED Gold

by | Nov 17, 2011

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Quality Technology Services has achieved LEED Gold certification at its Atlanta Metro facility, which it says is the world’s second-largest data centers.

LEED president Rick Fedrizzi said QTS’s achievement is all the more impressive because of the difficulties inherent in a multi-tenant data center, where individual tenant agreements require specific guidelines on temperature and humidity.

Since purchasing and upgrading the 990,000 square-foot Atlanta Metro Data Center in 2007, QTS said it has implemented several green processes, such as devoting 4.5 acres of roof space for rain water capture to support the data center’s cooling infrastructure. The company says that since January 2010, it has improved the center’s power usage effectiveness by 11.4 percent.

This summer, a fellow from the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps Program worked with the company’s data center operations and engineering teams to identify more than $4 million in potential annual energy efficiency cost savings. As a result, the company says, it plans to make a $10 million multi-year investment to implement the recommendations across its portfolio.

In other IT news, the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) is employing an uninterruptable power supply system from GE, which the center says will cut costs and risks while improving efficiencies. In the event of a power grid disruption, the GE technology switches to battery back-up power. GE said the system’s efficiency will save the center nearly 800,000 kWh of electricity each year—an annual cost savings of approximately $80,000.

And NVIDIA has announced that it will provide Barcelona’s Supercomputing Center with CUDA graphics processing units that will use between 15 and 30 times less power than current systems, Engadget reports.

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