Inside HP's Fort Collins Efficiency Testbed

HP recently opened a new facility in Fort Collins, Colorado that will double as a working data center and a testbed for researching the most efficient and sustainable approaches for operating data centers. HP provided a tour of the facility in which executives Duncan Campbell, Cullen Bash and Chandrakant Patel outlined the 50,000 square foot facility's sustainability features, which include both air-side and water-side economization systems, as well as both hot aisle and cold aisle containment systems. A couple of highlights are Bash's high-level overview of cooling towers, and Patel's discussion of the sustainability and economics in running a facility using both economizers and chillers. There's also a brief look at a system that uses ice for thermal storage to help HP do utility rate "peak shaving" in the summer months, cooling the ice overnight when rates are lower, and then using the cold water to supplement the chiller on summer days. This video from IT In Canada, runs about 8 minutes.

For more sustainability, see our Green Data Centers Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.