Smart Energy Savings | Green Energy News

June 2, 2007 – Vol.12 No.10

SMART ENERGY SAVINGS.

Cutting greenhouse gases, saving energy, increasing energy independence is not just about new, high technologies. It’s also about being clever, innovative and thoughtful with more basic, simpler and time tested technologies. Sometimes it’s about combining the two.

For example around the house we can manage energy needed for cooling by closing blinds or curtains on sun-soaked windows. We can remember to open windows too, and shut off the air conditioning when outside temperatures drop to comfortable levels. Then we can augment our homes cooling system with a high tech computerized setback thermostat.

But that’s for homes which are designed for the needs of people. What about commercial buildings that have to be designed for people, equipment, physical inventory and now, commonly, the handling of information through data centers.

Those Internet servers that send web pages from around the world to your home computer and those Intranet servers that send information throughout large organizations are all large consumers of electricity. They also generate considerable heat and need to be kept cool to operate efficiently. To the data center operator the only choice has been to crank up the air conditioning when the servers get hot.

Now there may be a better solution: Analyze the total cooling situation, look for overheating problem areas (hot spots) and move already existing cool air to eliminate those hot spots.

That’s what Degree Controls (DegreeC) claims to be doing with its AdaptiveCool (tm) program and technologies to cut cooling costs for data centers by as much as 30 percent.

The company begins with a site survey and audit of the customer’s facilities. Then a simulation of the air flow in the facility using a computational fluid dynamics program is developed. (That’s the really high tech part.) Finally a solution plan is drawn up and implemented by the company.

There’s nothing particularly exotic about the company’s solution technology - strategically placed AdaptiveCool floor-mounted fans to direct cool, air conditioned air where it’s needed. Vents to expel hot air in troublesome areas and sensors to manage the system and monitor the improvements. No big changes in the building’s heating, ventilating and cooling system are made. It’s just managed better.

Visit AdaptiveCool data center cooling solutions at http://www.fixmydatacentercooling.com/ DegreeC at http://www.degreec.com/