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The Risks and Rewards of Warmer Data Centers
1sockchuck writes "The risks and rewards of raising the temperature in the data center were debated last week in several new studies based on real-world testing in Silicon Valley facilities. The verdict: companies can indeed save big money on power costs by running warmer. Cisco Systems expects to save $2 million a year by raising the temperature in its San Jose research labs. But nudge the thermostat too high, and the energy savings can evaporate in a flurry of server fan activity. The new studies added some practical guidance on a trend that has become a hot topic as companies focus on rising power bills in the data center."
No they didn't - what they did do is figure out that increased temperature is not correlated to higher failure rates - the failure rates don't magically decrease as it gets hotter.
Here's the link for your review: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/07/02/18/0420247/Google-Releases-Paper-on-Disk-Reliability
It is true that if you are producing X BTUs of heat inside the room, then to maintain temperature, you have to pump that much heat out. However, the efficiency of this heat transfer depends on the temperature difference between the inside and the outside. To the extent you want to force air (or any other heat transfer medium) that is already colder than outside to dump energy into air (or other medium) that is warmer, that will cost you energy.
Also, too cold, and you will invite condensation. In your hypothetical scenario, you'd need to run some pretty powerful air conditioning to prevent condensation from forming everywhere.