The Green Data Center at the National Snow and Ice Data Center was selected as a winner of the 2012 Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards, presented by Uptime Institute. The GEIT Awards showcase organizations that are pioneering energy-efficiency improvements in their IT and data center operations. NSIDC will be honored at the seventh annual Uptime Institute Symposium, taking place in Santa Clara, CA, from May 14 to 17 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. NSIDC will present a case study about its award-winning initiative to the Symposium audience.
NSIDC is being recognized for its Green Data Center project, an innovative redesign of the data center cooling system that slashed energy use by more than 90 percent. The project demonstrates how other data centers might cut energy usage.
"The technology works, and it shows that others can do this too," said NSIDC Technical Services Manager David Gallaher, who led the project. "Data centers are big consumers of energy, and a lot of it is for cooling." According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as of 2006, U.S. data centers were estimated to consume 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, equivalent to the electricity consumed by 5.8 million average U.S. households. By 2020, the carbon footprint of data centers will exceed the airline industry.
The Green Data Center design team was led by David Gallaher, in collaboration with Director Mark Serreze, and DAAC Manager Ronald Weaver from NSIDC; Rick Osbaugh from RMH Group in Denver; Otto Van Geet from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL); and Lee Gillan from Coolerado Corporation.
More Information
For more information on the project, see the NSIDC Green Data Center Web site.
To learn more about the award, visit the Uptime Institute Web site.
Contact
Jane Beitler
National Snow and Ice Data Center
University of Colorado Boulder
+1 303.492.1497
jbeitler@nsidc.org
David Gallaher
National Snow and Ice Data Center
University of Colorado Boulder
+1.303.492.1827
david.gallaher@nsidc.org