UPS Data Center Wins Green Tech Award

The United Parcel Service’s Windward data center in Alpharetta, Georgia, won an 2008 Uptime Institute Green Enterprise IT Award, based on energy conservation measures implemented at the site. The award was given in the “Facilities Site Physical Infrastructure (Power and Cooling) Overhead" category.

 

Joe Parrino, data center manager at UPS’ Windward data center and his team innovated to achieve significant energy savings at the data center. This included installing two 1,000–ton centrifugal chillers and two 800–ton absorption chillers as well as a 650,000 gallon thermal storage tank. The thermal storage tank was designed to provide about 20 hours of emergency cooling, but Parrino stated that the data center also uses it for energy cost management.

 

In 2000, UPS installed a plate-and-frame heat exchanger that uses outside air temperatures to cool its chilled water. This practice, also known as water-side economizing, saves energy by allowing data centers to turn off chillers.

 

Using these devices, UPS’ data center is able shut down its chillers for up to seven months of the year, effectively providing the center with “free” cooling. Last year, the chillers were shut down on October 11 and not turned back on again until May 18, 2008. The annual energy savings is estimated at about 1,440,000 kilowatts, eliminating 1000 tons of carbon emissions, and reducing energy costs by up to $100,000.

 

Other modifications made by Parrino and his group include those made on the air handlers for the server power distribution units (PDU). The team is able to turn off 23 of the 65 air handler fans in the computer room, saving another 261 kilowatts of energy every hour and another $190,000 per year.

 

To measure the energy flow through the Tier 4 Windward facility, Parrino and his colleagues use the PUE, or Power Usage Efficiency. PUE was originally developed by the Uptime Institute and measures how much power the datacenter is using — including servers, CRAC systems, and systems. Using PUE, datacenters can calculate how much of their energy is actually going toward computing tasks.

 

The lower the PUE, the greater the efficiency of energy use at the datacenter. Parrino and his colleagues conducted a survey of 15 other data centers and found that on average, the PUE was 2.43, with 31 percent of the incoming power in those centers used for mechanical cooling.

 

The Windward center is shown to use only use 18 percent of its incoming power for mechanical cooling and other support systems. The PUE at Windward is 2.1 in summer and as low as 1.8 in winter, Parrino said.

 

Founded in 1993, the Uptime Institute is a research-based think tank and advisor on business and technology issues related to computing and energy efficiency.