In the arena of Corporate Social Responsibility Practices our favorite search engine Google is making history. Google has released a detailed report informing the public about clean energy innovation. Since 2008 the Google team has been committed to measuring its energy consumption and learning methods for reducing its energy footprint. Google states, “We take detailed measurements to continually push toward doing more with less and serving more users while wasting less energy.” It is hard for any data center to use less energy when they have to keep high performance computers running at all hours of the day but Google feels the challenge is worth hacking at.
Annual reports include data on the power-usage effectiveness (PUE) of all Google Server Centers. PUE is a ratio of the total power used to run a data center to the amount used to power the servers. As of 2012 the energy weighted average PUE for all Google data centers is among the most efficient in the world with a total of only 1.13. To help put this in perspective the global average of the largest data centers averages to around a 1.89. A third of the energy is wasted before it reaches the parts of the station that utilizes it for computing. Google servers are designed to improve efficiency and reduce the amount of energy being wasted.
What makes Google’s Eco-Energy Footprint Low?
- In Douglas Country, Georgia Google’s Data Center combats heat and keeps its servers cool with the use of recycled undrinkable water. The undrinkable water comes from local surrounding communities.
- Google keeps its cold aisle temperatures around 27 degrees C to save facility energy. Also instead of using a powered cooling system some of the centres uses outside air when it can.
- They use highly efficient voltage regulator modules to ensure the power goes to the components that do the actual computing work.
- Cut out two of the AC/DC conversion stages, which saves an estimated 500 kWh per server.
- Use minimal fan power to keep machines cool enough to run.
- Encourage suppliers to produce parts that operate efficiently. The more energy proportional systems can cut total energy use.
- Use thermal modeling location to physically arrange equipment to even out temperatures in the facility.
- Facility in Hamina, Finland pumps and uses sea water to manage its cooling system.
- They look for ways to reuse and repurpose equipment and materials. In 2007 Google remanufactured enough outdated severs to avoid buying 300,000 new machines.
On top of all these methods Google also uses energy offsetting programs as an initiative to balance there uses.
