Data Centers
Data Centers
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Data centers consume about 70 billion kWh of electricity per year in the United States, close to 2% of the nation’s electricity use. Their demand continues to surge as the use of applications such as artificial intelligence, Internet of things, autonomous vehicles, and virtual reality grows. By improving energy efficiency, the Data Centers sector could save billions in both costs and kWh of energy. |
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To date, 900+ Better Buildings, Better Plants partners have saved more than 3.1 quadrillion Btu, saving more than $18.5 billion and 189 million metric tons of CO2.
Featured Solutions
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Data Center Accelerator Toolkit Toolkits This toolkit addresses specific barriers and solutions for energy management in 5 primary data center types, including real-world examples for each. It collects guidance, factsheets, best practices, and other resources based on the work of DOE's Better Buildings Data Center Accelerator.
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Sabey Data Centers: Workforce Development Partnership with Big Bend Community College Solutions at a Glance Sabey Data Centers partnered with Big Bend Community College to develop a Data Center Training Program that prepares students for the Information Technology and facility management jobs critical to successfully maintaining data centers.
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Data Center Optimization at NREL Research Support Facility Showcase Project In order to maintain the facility's net-zero energy status, NREL improved the efficiency of the Research Support Facility's data center by upgrading outdated IT equipment, consolidating blade centers, and improving the metering system among other best practices. As a result, the data center achieved an 84% reduction in PUE.
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The National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory outgrew its former data center space and underwent a retro-commissioning process to meet the data center's growing needs. |
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The purpose of this brief guide is to present opportunities for small data center owners and operators that generally make sense and do not need expensive assessment and analysis to justify. |
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Additional Information
Center of Expertise for Energy Efficiency in Data Centers
The Center of Expertise is located at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). LBNL has long been recognized by the industry as a leading source for technical expertise on energy efficiency in data centers. View their available resources, tools and trainings.
ASHRAE Paper - Thermosyphon Cooler Hybrid System for Water Savings in an Energy-Efficient HPC Data Center: Modeling and Installation
This paper describes the installation of thermosyphon cooler hybrid systems.
NREL's High-Performance Computing Data Center
View information about NREL's high-performance data center and see the center's energy efficiency dashboard as well as other technologies they have implemented.
Data Center Growth in the United States: Decoupling the Demand for Services from Electricity Use
This paper presents a bottom-up model to estimate data center electricity demand in the United States over a 20 year period and examines observed and projected electricity use trends in the context of changing data center operations.