http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/articles/i/5358/?cid=3

US and UK authorities have announced new efforts on energy efficient data centres in recent weeks.

In the US, the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has announced plans for a new energy-efficient high performance computer (HPC) system at its campus in Golden, Colorado to undertake complex research into renewable energy and energy efficiency.

The $10 million data centre will be designed by Intel and Hewlett Packard, featuring Intel's Xeon Phi microprocessors and a specially designed cooling system. Hewlett Packard's cooling system will use warm water to capture waste heat and reuse it as the main heat source in other parts of the facility in offices and labs.

NREL hopes that the facility could boast a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.06 or lower, which is a measure of the power needed to keep servers, hard drives etc. running smoothly. Ideally, the PUE should be 1.0 but most data centres have a PUE of around 2.0, meaning that for every watt of power needed to run the computing power, a further watt is needed for cooling and other infrastructure.

"NREL's new data center will set the standard for sustainable and energy efficient computing," says Steve Hammond, director of NREL's Computational Science Center. "The data center will have a world-leading PUE and reuse nearly all waste heat generated. Most data centers do only one or the other, not both."

Meanwhile, the UK government is investing £1.25 million into feasibility studies of technologies that can improve the energy efficiency of computer and communications devices and systems.

The effort, which is open to consortia of two or more partners where one is an academic institution, is being managed by the Technology Strategy Board in partnership with the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (Dstl).

Projects, which can focus on the design and development of energy efficient hard- and software for both large-scale systems and mobile devices and chips, should last from 6-18 months and will be receive up to £100,000.

The competition opens in early October and applications are invited to register their interest by November 28 and submit full applications by December 5.