Want to bring down the electrical cost of your data center? One simple way to do that, says Google's Bill Weihl, is to crank up the thermostat, reports Computerworld. Weihl, Google's top energy executive, spoke at the GreenNet conference in San Francisco this week. The idea is hardly novel, and is in fact one of those ideas that gets brought up experts a lot, but hardly gets implemented in practice.

The logic behind this advice is simple: No observable degradation occurs when running servers at the freezing temperatures of most data centers, than say, at 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius).  For each degree of temperature increase in the thermostat though, there is an appreciable decrease in the corresponding energy bill--multiplied by the 24/7/365 operating hours inherent to data centers.

What I found interesting was Weihl's assertion that engineers and technicians at Google's data center "are often wearing shorts and t-shirts." This is in stark contrast to all the data centers that I know of where employees have to lug heavy jackets along for protection from the cold.

So what is an ideal setting for the thermostat? Weihl gave the following advice, "Look at the rated inlet temperature for your hardware. If the server can handle 90 degrees then turn the heat up to 85, even 88 degrees."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld 

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