LEED - the Logo Program for a Green Data Center? Not necessarily

April 22, 2010 Dave Ohara

The popularity using LEED to identify Green Data Centers has been interesting to watch. I had the opportunity to take the LEED exam and add LEED AP to my business card. But, this is where my renegade/contrarian side kicks in. I saw the exam as a waste of time, having a LEED associated with what I work on.

Why am I negative on LEED? Because it is a Logo program where if you meet the criteria you get a logo you can have on your building. A good demonstration of the problem is in this FastCompany article.

The problems are several. Critics argue that the USGBC ignores important geographical differences, attaching as much importance to water conservation in Washington as in Arizona. For that matter, every feature on the LEED checklist is awarded the same value--so a builder gets the same credit for installing a bike rack as for harvested-rain cooling, regardless of their true impact. But the biggest issue is cost. Design and construction reviews required for LEED certification can cost many thousands of dollars.

These are all good points, and the biggest one I agree with is cost. Why is LEED so popular in the Data Center industry. Because of the money made by the people who promote and market LEED. What is the ROI on LEED? People convince you LEED Silver isn't enough, Gold is the new minimum, and you should go for Platinum.

Uhhh? What is the ROI? For the consultants, it is an awesome ROI, spending more time in billable hours discussing alternatives to get more points. Customers feeling like they are getting something as they get another point for waterless urinals and bike racks - key features that are required data centers. :-) A lower water use cooling system doesn't count as much as waterless urinals even though the water use is probably 10,000 times more.

What happens if you did what Cornell did and built to LEED standards but didn't get certified?

Certifiable Cornell's Alice Cook House, the first of five nearly identical dorms.

Knockoff Construction of a new dorm, Hans Bethe Hall, which has the same green specs but won't be LEED-certified.

Cornell asked that question.

That's why some are looking for ways to circumvent the official process. By the time Cornell University completed the first of five nearly identical dorms in 2004, it had paid $300,000 in consultant and submission fees to get LEED status. Now, it's using that building as a blueprint for the other four--each featuring vegetated roofs, spaces with natural light, and a glycol heat exchanger. They're certifiable, just not certified.

READER RIFF

“If one designs with LEED standards, the resulting building will save you money while almost secondarily helping the environment. A savvy businessperson could only make one choice. ” --Lisa L. Reeves

On Earth Day when LEED data centers are a top topic. I am not going to contribute to listing those data centers that make others feel like they need to spend a bunch of money to put a LEED logo on their building.

I've watched this go on for years when I worked at Microsoft and had various roles in Windows Logo Programs. Microsoft was able to work the system as vendors knew their customers expect a Windows Logo on the box. Which is a masterful demonstration of using a Brand to market to customers.

Windows Logo Program: Overview

The Windows Logo Program is designed to address the current and future market needs of customers using the Windows platform. The Windows logo signifies the compatibility and reliability of systems and devices with Windows operating system. It gives customers confidence that your product is thoroughly tested with Microsoft-provided tools and ensures a good user experience.

The Windows Logo Program helps partners to innovate and bring a premium experience to market, thereby improving their ability to increase market share. The program strives to continuously improve its processes, responsiveness, and partner satisfaction.

LEED is a marketing program.

Imagine how greener a data center would be if the same amount of money spent for LEED certification was spent on reducing the overall environmental impact. But, there is no Logo for this. Just the satisfaction you used your money for a better purpose than being LEED certified.

Relationship of Electricity generation and Water, changes the game, 2 GW Entergy Nuclear Power Plant renewal permit denied based on warm water discharge

April 5, 2010 Dave Ohara

WSJ and others report on the New York environmental regulators, not the US EPA, denying Entergy's request for a 2 gigawatt Nuclear Power Plant renewal, supplying 30% of NYC's electricity.

New York Regulators Deny Water Permit for Nuclear Plant

By MARK LONG

NEW YORK -- New York environmental regulators have denied a key water-quality certificationEntergy Corp. needs to extend by 20 years its license to operate the 2,000-megawatt Indian Point nuclear-power plant.

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation said in a letter to Entergy dated April 2 that the two units of the plant "do not and will not comply with existing New York State water quality standards," even with the addition of a new screening technology favored by Entergy to protect aquatic life. The plant's existing "once-through" system withdraws and returns as much as 2.5 billion gallons of Hudson River water a day for cooling, a system blamed by environmentalists for damaging the river's ecosystem and killing millions of fish a year, including the endangered shortnose sturgeon.

Certification under the Clean Water Act is required before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission can approve an extension of the operating license for Indian Point, which generates enough electricity to power approximately 2 million homes and is major power source for New York City. The licenses for Indian Point units 2 and 3, which came online in the 1970s, are due to expire in September 2013 and December 2015, respectively.

What is humorous is the environmental group Riverkeeper thinking that 2 gigawatt of baseload can be brought on line by 2015.

"That power is replaceable," said Alex Matthiessen, president of environmental group Riverkeeper. "The evidence for why the plant doesn't meet state water-quality standards is overwhelming," he said, adding Indian Point accounts for the deaths of about a billion fish a year and that the group estimates cooling towers could be constructed for $200 million to $300 million.

The following is a study published on air or hybrid cooling for power plants vs. water.

Emerging Issues and Needs

in Power Plant Cooling Systems

Water availability is affecting power plant placement. You need to be thinking the same for data center placement.

However, with the construction of new power plants in recent years, perhaps the most prevalent concern with wet cooling systems has been water availability. Growing competition from municipal and agricultural users has decreased the amounts and increased the prices of good quality water resources available to industrial users. This competition is most apparent in the southwestern U.S. where the need for new electric power generation is significant, but regional surface water sources are minimal and groundwater sources are highly prized and may have designated use restrictions. But even in areas usually considered “water rich”, such as the northeastern U.S., the combination of environmental, safety & health, and resource availability concerns has resulted in an increasing interest in dry and hybrid cooling systems as alternatives to wet cooling systems.

Size of Dry Cooling system vs. Wet Cooling - 2.2 times larger

Size. By definition, dry cooling involves the transfer of heat to the atmosphere
without the evaporative loss of water (i.e., by sensible heat transfer only). Because sensible heat transfer is less efficient than evaporative heat transfer, dry cooling systems must be larger than wet cooling systems. For example, to achieve a comparable heat rejection, one study estimates that a direct dry cooling system (ACC) will have a footprint about 2.2 times larger than a wet cooling tower and a height about 1.9 times greater.2

Maintenance of operations.

• Maintenance. Both direct and indirect dry cooling systems, as well as hybrid cooling systems, are larger and mechanically more complex than corresponding wet cooling systems. In addition to the larger heat transfer surface area, dry and hybrid cooling systems will have more fans, meaning more electrical motors, gearboxes and drive shafts. As such, labor requirements for a large ACC can be substantial. At one site with a 60-cell ACC (three 20-cell bays for three separate steam turbines), the maintenance staff was increased by two people for such activities as cleaning fan
blades and heat exchanger tube fins, monitoring lube-oil systems, and leak checking the vacuum system.3
• Energy penalties. Because sensible heat transfer is directly related to the ambient dry-bulb temperature, a dry cooling system must have the flexibility to respond to typical daily temperatures variations of 20-25 °F. A dry system that maintains an optimum turbine backpressure at ambient dry-bulb temperatures of 90-95 °F, may not - 6 - be able to do so as the temperature increases, meaning a lower generating efficiency.

From a design perspective, more surface area (i.e., a larger dry cooling system) can compensate for the decline in heat transfer at high ambient temperatures; but the greater size and associated operational control are also concerns, as previously discussed.

When all things are equal, it comes down to cost of systems.

Costs. If performance, availability and reliability appear to be equal, then the single issue that will most likely govern the selection and use of a power plant cooling system is cost. Unfortunately, the economics of power plant cooling systems are complex, which means cost estimates are frequently mistaken, misunderstood or misrepresented.
This complexity results from the complicated relationships of three key costs: installed equipment capital cost, annual operating and maintenance or O&M cost, and energy penalty cost. For most manufacturing processes, the first two costs can be fairly well defined and, to a certain extent, contractually guaranteed by the vendor/supplier. But the energy penalty cost is somewhat unique to power plant cooling systems because it reflects a direct performance link between the cooling system and the low-pressure
turbine-generator. Consequently, the potential for and the magnitude of an energy penalty cost can dictate cooling system design and operating changes that directly affect the capital and O&M costs. So in a competitive market, generating power in the most cost-effective manner depends upon a company’s ability to balance all three key costs and optimize the overall life-cycle cost of the cooling system.

What is the water footprint of the power plant supplying your data center?

Are you planning for water as a scarce resource affecting the cooling systems for your data center?

Here is what Google presented on water use at it's data center event a year ago.

Multiple Speakers Discuss Water Issues at Google’s Efficiency Data Center Summit

I have been blogging about water issues in the data center for a while, and have a category for tagging posts for “water.”

IBM opens Green Innovation Data Center for tours

September 17, 2009 Dave Ohara

news.com has an article on IBM’s new Green Innovation Data Center. Customers can now add this to a choice of HP’s Dynamic Smart Cooling solution.

IBM data center gets deep energy retrofit

by Martin LaMonica

SOUTHBURY, Conn.--IBM's "green" data center here is kind of like a techie version of the "This Old House" television show. But in this case, the project was to build a showcase for energy-efficiency computing, rather than construct a new addition for a suburban home.

IBM's main problem was data center sprawl. Five years ago, internal IT staff could barely keep up with growing demand for computing resources from employees, causing an expansion from one data center location to four--a situation that was costly and inefficient.

Now, those four data centers have been consolidated into a single spot with the latest in energy-efficient tech gear, including a network of 200 sensors and water-cooled servers. It also uses what are considered the best practices for physically laying out a data center, with close attention to everything from cabling to air flow.

The news.com article has a variety of pictures, most not really that interesting. Here is a picture of the Automated Logic control panel which integrates with a beta IBM Tivoli energy management system.

IBM is a big believer in water cooling.

To lighten the overall cooling load, IBM is using its Cool Blue liquid-cooling systems, which fit onto the back of server racks. These heat exchangers cool the hot air coming from servers' fans by circulating cold water through coils, which absorb the server heat and then are cooled using the building's chiller.

I wonder how many IBM plumbers you get with a service engagement?

A look at the under-floor controls for the water-cooling system, which is monitored for flow and temperature. The water is cooled by the building's chiller, but IBM set up a local loop of the water so that it can serve individual server racks, a way to improve the overall efficiency.

It is interesting to see others who are trying to get rid of this complexity in the data center, and increase temperatures.

Real-Time Water Data for US

September 14, 2009 Dave Ohara

Water is a critical resources to run a data center few think about monitoring the supply chain. You can buy generators to provide backup power, and run for weeks on generators. But, how long can you run when you lose your water supply?

Found a web site on US Geological Survey on Real-Time Water Data for the US.

It is nice to know the US gov’t is providing real-time information using web services to allow you to get notifications of changes in water availability.

For New York City here is a status of the reservoirs.

Microsoft’s Smart Grid Water Solution, OSIsoft Vancouver, BC Video

September 4, 2009 Dave Ohara

I just blogged about IBM’s Water Smart Grid, and my readers pointed out there is an existing solution from Microsoft with OSIsoft as a partner.

The below video has details.

Environmental Sustainability IT Software by OSIsoft

The above picture is CEO of OSIsoft Pat Kenndy, and here is a case study that discusses some of his views.

OSIsoft

Cleaner Air, Cleaner Water

At age 64, J. Patrick Kennedy still plays a great game of tennis. But, as he’s the first to admit, it’s not the same game of tennis he played almost half a century ago in high school.

“I find that as I get older, the game is less about pure force and more about placement,” says Kennedy. “It’s about conserving your energy and directing the ball right where you want it to go.”

Kennedy might just as well be talking about the environmental sustainability. That’s another interest of Kennedy’s—a professional interest this time, given that Kennedy is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of OSIsoft, the San Leandro, California-based maker of the PI System: a real-time performance management infrastructure that measures and records the activity of equipment, products, and processes throughout a company.

Although Kennedy and OSIsoft didn’t set out to become major players in the global effort for environmental sustainability, that’s the way it’s turned out. OSIsoft’s software products help companies worldwide to address this pressing global issue. Many companies know only their aggregated energy or water consumption and their carbon emissions—long after the fact. OSIsoft provides companies with timely information about exactly where and how energy is being consumed and emissions generated. This information is made available to those who can act on it in a timely way, and see the result. Companies use this data to identify work practices and faults that result in resource loss, address those inefficiencies and, thus, reduce greenhouse gas production while lowering their resource consumption.

…

Another of OSIsoft’s customers is the Halifax Regional Water Commission (HRWC), the first regulated water, wastewater, and storm water utility in Canada. HRWC is a fully-metered utility that provides drinking water to about 325,000 residents of Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) through a 1,300km (more than 1,000 miles) pipe network.

The PI System enables HRWC to collect, analyze, and disseminate data from more than 120 meters across its treatment and distribution facilities. With this information, it can then determine the period of a leak, the amount of leakage, and narrow the location to a specific district-metered area. Consequently, the PI System has been a key contributor to HRWC’s daily reduction in leakage of almost 9 million gallons of potable water. This reduction translates to a savings of more than U.S.$550,000 per year.

And, you can use OSISoft in the data center, Microsoft does.

OSIsoft software is also helping to address energy consumption in an area that affects virtually every large company and every person with an e-mail address or access to the Internet: the data center. Data centers may account for between 1.2 and 2 percent of all electricity consumed in the United States—and, if counted as its own industry, would be the fastest-growing electrical energy consumer in the U.S. and one of the top five in terms of energy use. Microsoft, which is rapidly expanding its datacenter operations to support its Microsoft Live and related service offerings, is one of the growing number of companies using OSIsoft software to help conserve data center energy consumption.