Achieving the ultimate in green building badges — the LEED platinum certification — is pretty rare, and it is particularly unusual for data centers. But on Thursday, GE showed off its new LEED platinum-certified data center in Louisville, Ky., and the facility is 34 percent more energy efficient than a standard building.
LEED Platinum is more a design certification than anything else, and GE retrofitted an existing building for the data center. Fifty percent of the construction materials for the facility come from local sources, and 30 percent of the construction materials are recycled materials. GE also recycled the majority of the waste from the process.
GE used a lot of its own technology to achieve the LEED status, including its efficient eBoost backup power supply. In addition GE employed raised floors for more-efficient cooling.
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1 / 16GE Data CenterThe battery rooms at the data center -
2 / 16GE Data CenterGenerators for backup power -
3 / 16GE Data CenterThermal storage tanks for cooling -
4 / 16GE Data Center4-foot raised floors for cooling -
5 / 16GE Data CenterGE digital controls connect to the power supply -
6 / 16GE Data Center -
7 / 16GE Data CenterEntellysis low-voltage switchgear and power quality systems -
8 / 16GE Data CenterUPS rooms -
9 / 16GE Data CenterGE's UPS with eBoost -
10 / 16GE Data CenterGE’s high-voltage switch gear provides redundant utility power -
11 / 16GE Data Center -
12 / 16GE Data CenterOptical hand scanners -
13 / 16GE Data Center128 cabinets of high- density, high-efficiency servers -
14 / 16GE Data CenterHigh-density servers -
15 / 16GE Data CenterHigh-density servers -
16 / 16GE Data Center
GE doesn’t mention the PUE (power efficiency metric) of the data center, which is the typical efficiency metric used by the data center industry, and instead focuses on the LEED aspect. But it will be good to know the PUE metric over time, as that will indicate how efficiently the facility is using electricity while it’s up and running (and throughout hot and cold months).
The world’s data centers consume a lot of electricity. In 2010 data centers consumed about 1.3 percent of all electricity use for the world and 2 percent of all electricity use for the U.S., according to the latest report from Jonathan Koomey.
Images courtesy of GE


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