Data Centers Prepare for a Renewable Future

miller60 writes "A small but growing number of data centers are generating renewable energy at their facility, despite challenges with cost and scalability. In a special report, Data Center Knowledge looks at data centers implementing on-site solar power, wind energy, geothermal cooling and recycling waste heat from their hot aisles. Even as some projects choose to go green, other data center operators insist that improved power efficiency offers a far better return and carbon impact than pursuing on-site renewables."

Comments

Well, not exactly

[Colin Smith]

Idle means zero computing units and running

Performance per watt is almost always calculated running flat out at 100%.

So if it's idle. i.e. not doing anything useful, it's almost certainly still consuming a significant amount of power doing symbiotic processing; processing which is necessary to keep the system running but which doesn't contribute directly to useful computing units. Except that won't be covered in the performance/watt figures.

So, using performance per watt when purchasing is really only useful as a measure if you're able to keep your systems running at high utilisation and switch them off otherwise.