Energy Biz - July/August 2008 - (Page 10) » FinAnciAl Front Incenting savings Utilities’ Role in CompUteR effiCienCy By RadhakRishna hiRemane and loRie Wigle In most developed and many developing nations, using digital technology for computing, communication and entertainment has become a way of life. As businesses expand to meet the needs of such consumers, so does the infrastructure that processes, exchanges and stores all the associated information. In coming years, it will be increasingly important to expand this infrastructure in a way that optimizes the work delivered for the lowest possible power cost and corresponding carbon footprint. The computing industry is becoming increasingly more eco-aware in response to growing environmental awareness around the world, particularly with respect to global warming. Through the development of energy-efficient products and the formation of industry groups such as The Green Grid and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, the industry is helping businesses and organizations conserve energy while continuing to increase the computing capacity of their data centers. Additional encourageNewsFlash ment is coming from Brazilian Wind utilities in many parts of A Brazilian generator is the United States in the ordering Vestas Wind form of energy-efficiency Systems turbines, according to a report by incentives or rebates. By Thomson Financial. encouraging the purVestas said that chase and use of energyNew Energy Options is ordering 92 units of its efficient technologies, 1.65-megawatt turbine these incentives help units for the state of Rio Grande do Norte. data centers reduce energy costs, achieve improved performance, contribute to global environmental efforts, and reduce capital expenditures. There are dozens of incentive programs from local utilities or state energy-efficiency programs that give rebates to customers who reduce their energy usage through improved efficiency or the use of renewable energy sources. A growing number of these programs are customized for data centers. They encourage everything from server consolidation projects to energy-efficiency refreshes, such as installing more efficient servers and cooling technology. July/August 2008 (Guest opinion) Over the course of the past five years, the computing industry has well understood the need for energy-efficient or green computing and charted a technology course towards it. As an example, Intel in its products has delivered energy-efficient multi-core processors, process technology that lowers power consumption, Halogenfree products, innovation in hardware assists for virtualization, and lower power enterprise mobile products. And the industry builds on these to deliver solutions that produce more work while consuming less energy and allow the workloads of multiple systems to be consolidated in one in order to increase the utilization of each piece of equipment. Most utility companies also recognize the benefits of such evolving new energy-efficient technology and encouraging the deployments. AvAilAble incentive progrAms In August 2006, Pacific Gas and Electric in California became the first utility to offer rebates to business customers who replace existing computing equipment with new, high-efficiency servers or implement virtualization projects. In 2007, PG&E extended its rebate program to data center disk storage equipment. Through PG&E’s energy-efficiency incentives program, qualifying customers can earn a rebate of up to $4 million per project site. The program has industry support from many high-technology 10 E n E rgyB i z
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