Award Nets Discount for Advanced Data Centers

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An exterior view of the Advanced Data Centers facility in Sacramento, Calif.

Advanced Data Centers said this week that its new data center in Sacramento has received the largest award yet from an energy efficiency incentive program sponsored by California's utility companies. The award from the Savings By Design program will allow Advanced Data Centers (ADC) to obtain a long-term reduction in its power rate from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD).

Michael Cohen, the president of ADC, says the resulting base rate of less than 7.7 cents per kilowatt hour will be the lowest rate in California. PG&E rates typically run about 10 cents per kWh, while Silicon Valley Power in Santa Clara offers rates of about 8.2 cents per kWh for large industrial customers (including a public benefit charge).

The Savings by Design Program is sponsored by California's five utilty companies, and offers design assistance and financial incentives to encourage design teams to build eneregy efficient facilities.

Advanced Data Centers is building a 237,000 square foot data center at McClellan Park on McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, California. The USGBC has pre-certified the ADC facility for a LEED score of 50 points, above the 45 points required for LEED Platinum, the highest certification tier.

The ADC Sacramento site has 50 megawatts of power capacity, and will be able to support customer power loads of up to 200 watts per square foot. The building will use air-side economizers and also make use of grey water from the Air Force base as a redundant water supply for its chiller infrastructure.

ADC recently completed construction of a new 45 megawatt substation at the site. SMUD acquires energy through hydro generation, cogeneration plants and renewable technologies in addition to purchasing power on the wholesale market.