'Green' technology gets attention of big power users
Interest in energy alternatives for data centers is growing
Computerworld - KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- Joseph Weller, the manager of computer operations at Delta Dental of Michigan, just purchased a hydrogen fuel cell car kit for his 10-year-old grandson's birthday. "I thought it was kind of cool," he said with a wide grin between sessions at the Afcom data center conference here. But Weller said he has a professional interest in the toy car's energy system, too.
"We have to find alternative means of power -- we can't rely on current technology," said Weller, noting that if the fuel cell can move a 12-inch toy car, the technology may have the "capability of providing energy to a facility." The Okemos-based insurer has some 5.5 million members.
There's a growing interest in "green" technologies, even if data managers at this conference will readily admit that they don't see things like fuel cells arriving in their data centers anytime soon because of the technology's immaturity and cost. But efforts are under way to figure out how best to power data centers with alternative fuels.
The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Health (NIH) have begun exploring whether fuel cell technology can be used to power the NIH's data center facilities, said Paul Powell, data center manager for the Bethesda, Md.-based federal agency. Powell is interested in fuel cells, but finds it difficult to believe that the technology can power his data centers.
"As a data center manager, I have concerns: It's going to take up an awful lot of space," he said.
Fuel cells rely on hydrogen and chemical reactions to produce energy, leaving water as a by-product. One company that introduced fuel cells last year for data center use is American Power Conversion Corp. (APC), but the technology is intended for niche uses at this point. A fuel cell costs about 10 times that of a generator, and those firms that have either adopted fuel cells in data centers are typically located in high-rise buildings where generators aren't an option, or in situations requiring portable energy supplies.
"It's really in an experimental stage," said Steven Carlini, director of product management at APC.
APC's fuel cell technology, which can support up to 30 kilowatts of electricity -- about the amount some large blade servers use -- gets about 10 minutes from each tank of hydrogen, which are typically the size of a welder's tank. The fuel cell will continue to supply power as long as it doesn't run out of hydrogen fuel.
That's where Powell's concern about size comes in. He houses a 25,000-square-foot mainframe data center and a separate 5,500-square-foot facility for Unix and Windows machines, which together use about one megawatt-hour of energy a month. He envisions the need for a separate building just to house a fuel cell's power supply.
- The 20 Best iPhone/iPad Games of 2013 So Far
- 9 Steps to Build Your Personal Brand (and Your Career)
- 7 Consumer Technologies Coming to an Enterprise Near You
- 11 Signs Your IT Project is Doomed
- A walking tour: 33 questions to ask about your company's security
- 15 social media scams
- The 7 elements of a successful security awareness program
- IT Certification Study Tips
- Register for this Computerworld Insider Study Tip guide and gain access to hundreds of premium content articles, cheat sheets, product reviews and more.
- Harness IT -- An Introduction to Business Intelligence Solutions Learn the key selection criteria required to provide your organization with the capability to address structured data, unstructured data and mobile demands so...
- Business Intelligence Shows its Smarts Today's Business Intelligence (BI) tools provide a new way to think about data with self-service capabilities and user-friendly analytics that can be used...
- Proactive Planning for Big Data Big data is less about the terabytes and more about the query tools and business intelligence needed to make sense of massive amounts...
- Security Empowers Business Every magazine article, presentation or blog about the topic seems to start the same way: trying to scare the living daylights out of...
- Becoming An Analytics Driven Organization Join us on Tuesday, June 18, 2013, 11:00 AM EDT and learn how your agency can create an analytics culture that will enable...
- 3 Reasons Why Sepaton is the World's Fastest Backup Solution Leading analyst, Storage Switzerland learns how Sepaton backs up and deduplicates massive data volumes while maintaining the industry's fastest performance - all in... All Data Center White Papers | Webcasts
Rising salaries boost IT optimism, though not everyone is feeling upbeat. Our survey of 4,000+ IT workers shows who's riding the wave and why. Use our interactive tool and compare your own paycheck. Read more...