According to the US Department of Energy, data centers consumed 1.5% of all electricity in the U.S. in 2006. Additionally, the power usage by data centers is growing at the rate of 12% per year. (Scheihing, Paul. “DOE Data Center Energy Efficiency Program.” U.S. DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. May 2008. U.S. Department of Energy. 26 May 2009) This translates to a huge and very technical problem, which is getting a lot of attention given the emphasis on “green” initiatives by some of large companies that operate these data centers. Such a large problem in fact, that IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano predicted that 70% of the world’s largest companies “will modify their data centers significantly in the next five years” (Wall Street Journal, “Cutting Tech’s Energy Bill”, September 9, 2008.) Fortunately, the low-tech strip curtain is helping offer some relief to this problem.
It seems like strip curtains or strip doors–the clear vinyl strips that you see hanging in the doorways of beer coolers and walk-in freezers–have been around forever. They are often used as a “low-end” solution where a practical, reliable, economical thermal barrier is required. So how are these low-tech workhorses providing relief to such a high-tech problem as data center energy consumption?
The answer lies in the redesign of data centers for improved “hot aisle/cold aisle” airflow management. In these redesigned configurations, cold air is brought up through a raised floor in the cold aisle (i.e., the front side of the server racks). This cold air is then pulled through the servers from the front (cold aisle) side to the exhaust (hot aisle) side of the server. This hot air is then pulled up to the return air ducts in the ceiling. Without a physical separation between the two aisles, the hot air can spill over the tops of the servers and intermingle with the cold air on the cold side of the racks — a big problem where energy efficient cooling is concerned. (”High Performance Data Centers; A Design Guidelines Sourcebook.” High-Performance Buildings for High-Tech Industries. January 2006. Pacific Gas & Electric Company. 26 May 2009.) This is where the strip curtain comes to the rescue.
The strip curtain is hung from the ceiling over the tops of the servers to serve as a physical separation between the cold aisle and the hot aisle, resulting in dramatic energy savings. In fact, according to a presentation by James Hamilton of Amazon Web Services at the Google Google Efficient Data Centers Summit in April 2009, just controlling the airflow in the data center can result in a 12% improvement in power usage effectiveness (PUE). (Hamilton, James. “Google Efficient Data Centers Summit; Data Canter Efficiency Best Practices .” Going Green at Google: Clean Energy Initiatives. 01 Apr 2009. Google, Inc.. 26 May 2009)
Not a bad contribution for a low tech solution like a vinyl strip curtain!
Note: Chase Doors, the host of this blog, manufactures and sells door products including the vinyl strip curtains and strip doors mentioned in this article. Additionally, it hosts a related e-commerce site www.stripdoorsonline.com.