Free Cooling, Illustrated

advanceddatacenters

Metal louvers line the side of the Advanced Data Centers facility in Sacramento, Calif.

Metropolitan newspapers sometimes struggle to translate the intricacies of the data center to their readers. It was a nice surprise to see the effort the Sacramento Bee invested in today's feature about how data centers are using free cooling (air side economization) to save energy costs. The story was prompted by recent coverage of Advanced Data Centers and an energy efficiency award from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. ADC will uses a series of 15-foot high metal lovers that line the length of its 300-foot building (seen in the photo above) to regulate the use of fresh air in the data center cooling systems.

The Bee went the extra mile and created an information graphic that provides a visual guide to free cooling concepts, illustrating how air flows through a data center. It's a useful bookmark for providing a quick, user-friendly explanation of free cooling concepts. While the paper highlight ADC's DESIGN work, it also includes comments and perspective from established Sacramento providers Herakles and RagingWire, as well as Rumsey Engineers, KC Mares and Bill Tschudi from Lawrence Berkeley labs.