The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is in the process of installing a new data center at its Golden, Colo., site and has tapped Intel and HP to help make it the world’s most energy efficient. Says Environmental Leader, the new $10 million center will boast an “annualized average power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.06 or better. The average data center operates with a PUE of 1.91, according to 2009 data from the EPA’s Energy Star program.” The center will use its computing capacity—which is said will be able to carry out 1 quadrillion (1 million billion) calculations per second—for research into renewable energy and energy efficiency.
The project features a technology, currently under development, that uses warm water in the computing rack to efficiently cool the servers. NREL says the data center will also maximize the reuse of heat generated by the HPC system. The “waste heat” from the computer system will be used as the primary heat source in the other offices and lab space in the Energy Systems Integration Facility (cross section, pictured) in which the data center will reside. It will also be possible to export excess heat to adjacent buildings and other areas of the NREL campus, the laboratory says.