This is extremely interesting news, and has been covered widely in the business and technology press. HP designed and built a data center in Wynyard Park, England (near Billingham) which uses wind for nearly all its cooling needs.
EDS (purchased by HP) announced the building of the data center early in 2009, and the technology involved already was making news. DataCenter Knowledge had an article on it; ComputerWorld’s Patrick Thibodeau also had a very nice in-depth article on the planned data center. ComputerWorld followed up with an equally comprehensive article when the data center opened recently.
Another extensive and illuminating article was written by Andrew Nusca at SmartPlanet.
What is so interesting about the Wynyard data center?
- It is wind-cooled, and uses a 12-foot plenum (with the equipment located on the floor above).
- All racks are white, instead of black: this requires 40% less lighting in the data center.
- Rainwater will be captured and filtered, then used to maintain the appropriate humidity.
- The facility is calculated to have a PUE of 1.2 (one of the lowest ever). New energy-efficient data centers typically have a PUE of 1.5 or so.
- HP estimates they could save as much as $4.16 million in power annually.
These are indeed exciting times for data center technology.
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