PG&E offer green data center incentives

Daniel Christopher Jones

Green Data Centers

PG&E, the California-based energy provider are set to start offering incentives to green data centers in the state.

Specifically, the incentives will go the data centers that purchase servers accredited with the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star rating, the utility company announced at this month's Silicon Valley Leadership Group's Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit in Sunnyvale, California.

At the summit, PG&E's principal program manager for customer energy efficiency, Mark Bramfitt, discussed the incentives program, but later revealed that he will soon be leaving PG&E after 25 years with the utility.

Managing power supply performance

The EPA's Energy Star strives to improve data center energy efficiency by setting up qualifications for servers as being considered energy-efficient. The certification measures the categories of managing power supply performance, functioning in a virtualized environment, and energy benchmarks for measuring and reporting server energy use and are designed to make it easier for data center operators to compare the energy efficiency of servers from major vendors.

In turn for PG&E customers selecting Energy Star servers, the manufacturers will receive financial incentives who will then be obligated to pass these savings onto the end user.

In 2008, PG&E handed out $7 million in energy reduction incentives which 7MW of load reduction. The company has also set aside $50 million for program spending from 2010 to 2012.

So, if you're based in California it looks like there are extra financial rewards as well as the environmental benefits that can come from using green data centers. Let's hope businesses across America start seeing the same benefits soon.