Datapipe Centers Fully Powered by Renewables

IT service provider Datapipe has announced that its U.S. data centers are now buying 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.

The provider of managed services and infrastructure for IT and cloud computing says that it is now one of just 13 IT companies to be a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership.

Datapipe’s California data center, in San Jose, recently converted to running solely on renewable energy. The company’s other U.S. data centers converted to renewable power in 2010.

The firm says its 56 million kWh of green power purchases is equivalent to the CO2 emissions of over 7,000 vehicles per year, or the annual emissions of nearly 6,000 American homes.

Datapipe says that it has made energy efficiency a priority at each of its data centers. Its use of an efficient cooling configuration has resulted in 55 percent power savings, Datapipe says. It has also invested in ultrasonic humidifiers, which it says save 90 percent over traditional humidifiers.

Datapipe’s other environmental initiatives include recycling and waste reduction programs, mass transit incentives and paperless billing.

In the latest release from the Green Power Partnership,the EPA said that 14 of the top 50 companies (ranked by amount of renewable energy purchased) buy renewable energy credits covering 100 percent or more of their energy use. They include Kohl’s, Whole Foods, HSBC North America, T.D. Bank and Dannon.

Intel, which is first ranked by amount of green energy purchased, uses renewables for 88 percent of its total electricity use. Cisco ranks 11^th and Dell ranks 35^th by amount of green energy purchased.

Last month FedEx opened its first environmentally friendly data center, which the company says has an average power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.28.

In this video, Mark Monroe of data center efficiency consortium the Green Grid tells DatacenterDynamics FOCUS what to expect from the organization’s newly expanded mission.