Data storage centers aim to cut power costs

By Rebekah Kebede

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As everything from health-care records to television goes online, the burgeoning U.S. data-center industry is looking for ways to curb its skyrocketing energy consumption.

Data storage centers are among the fastest-growing consumers of energy in the United States, with electricity needs projected to grow by 12 percent annually, said Alexander Karsner, the assistant secretary for renewables and efficiency at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Members of the Green Grid Association, a group of IT companies, data center operators and consumers, on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the DOE to boost energy efficiency by 10 percent at U.S. data centers.

The agreement comes on the heels of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study released in August, which found that data centers account for 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption -- the equivalent of the amount of electricity used by 5.8 million average U.S. households or $4.5 billion a year.

But at some data centers, as little as 30 percent of that energy use goes to processing and storage, according to the Green Grid. The rest either dissipates as heat generated by data servers or is gobbled up by coolers, humidifiers, and other data-center infrastructure.

Green Grid members hope to slash the amount of electricity going to those peripheral functions at data centers and dedicate more energy to actual data storage.

As data centers become indispensable for sectors as various as banking, government, and entertainment, demand for data processing and storage has doubled in the last five years, according to the EPA.

"Data centers are the factories of the 21st century," Roger Tipley, an engineering strategist at Hewlett Packard Co and member of the Green Grid's board, told reporters.