Data centers are wasting energy by running too cold

Running data centers at temperatures that are too cold wastes energy, says Intel's Dylan Larson. Larson is the director of platform technology initiatives in the company's server platform group. To support his points, he pointed to a recent energy efficiency study on data centers.

Essentially, the study looked at temperatures at a number of data centers. The result showed that every one of the surveyed facilities kept the thermostat at varying amounts below the recommended 27 degrees Celsius (80.6 Fahrenheit). In fact, at least two thirds of the participants were cooling their data centers at 70°F and below.

The recommended temperature of 80°F actually comes from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), and was published last year in their "Environmental Guidelines for Datacom Equipment" guide. ASHRAE is the leading US cooling-industry consortium.

Larson explained that the wasted power is mainly sapped by mechanical fans spinning overtime to bring down the temperature. He noted that substantial reduction in power consumption is possible by reducing the fan speed "by even a small percentage," and that "reducing the fan requirement by half reduces power consumption by something like 87 percent."

For more on this story:
- check out this blog at The Register
- check out the study (pdf) from Intel

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