Thursday, July 30, 2009

Google's effort at offsetting Carbon

Google logo on search on the day of Solar eclipse (22nd July 2009)

Only a few days back, I had posted a blog on Yahoo’s efforts for Carbon off setting. http://ronnie05.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/9834/. Google is also following suit in terms of efforts to neutralize carbon footprint.


Ambient Cooling is one of the approaches highlighted in the article http://www.reuters.com/article/gwmTechnology/idUS338804957820090722. In its Belgium data centre, rather than using internal air-conditioning for cooling the hardware, the company is relying on the normally low atmospheric temperatures to provide all the free cooling its servers need. The climate in Belgium will support free cooling almost year-round, according to Google engineers, with temperatures rising above the acceptable range for free cooling about seven days per year on average. The average temperature in Brussels during summer reaches 66 to 71 degrees, while Google maintains its data centers at temperatures above 80 degrees. On days, when the atmospheric temperature is above the data centers temperature, Google will turn off equipment as needed in Belgium and shift computing load to other data centers.This approach is made possible by the scope of the company’s global network of data centers, which provide the ability to shift an entire data center’s workload to other facilities. As a result of its use of outside-air for cooling the data center, Google will save tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in cooling costs, while also cutting back on the greenhouse gas emissions tied to the electricity used to run the chillers.

No comments: