PG&E Boosts Data Center Incentive Pool

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has set aside $50 million to fund rebates to data center operators that reduce their energy consumption, Network World reports. That marks a significant expansion of a program that distributed $8 million in rebates in 2008.  

Data center operators that have received sizable rebate payments from PG&E include NetApp ($1.4 million), Fortune Data Centers ($900,000), 365 Main ($168,000) and Sonic.net ($129,000).

In August 2006, PG&E became the first utility to offer rebates to business customers that implement virtualization and server consolidation projects. Qualifying customers able to earn a rebate of up to $4 million per project site. PG&E’s High Tech Energy Efficiency Incentives program has industry support from VMware, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM and Rackable Systems.