Google's Efficient Data Centers

Key Facts

• Google-designed data centers use about 50% of the energy of a typical data center, through a combination of efficient servers and efficient data centers themselves.
• • Efficient Servers: Servers only lose a little over 15% of the electricity they pull from the wall during power conversion steps, less than half of what is lost in a typical server. They omit parts that aren't needed for Google applications. For example, these servers don't have any graphics chips. Google also optimizes its servers and racks to use the minimum amount of fan power possible. Moreover the fans are controlled to spin only as fast as necessary to keep the server temperature below a threshold. The company encourages all of its suppliers to produce components that operate efficiently whether they are idle, operating at full capacity, or at lower usage levels, a property called "energy proportionality."
  • Efficient Data Centers: Google reduced the energy-weighted average overhead across all Google-built data centers to 19% versus the average of 96% reported by the EPA.
• The project took 0 months to implement
• The actual (or projected) savings from the project are $30 per year per server
• The primary sponsor for the project was SVP, Operations

What was the impact?

• 500KWh of energy have been saved on this project
• This saving will be made over 12 months

• Comments on energy savings

  Google's published studies indicate that more energy proportional systems could cut in half the total energy used by large data center operations. The company reduced the energy-weighted average overhead across all Google-built data centers to 19% versus the average of 96% reported by the EPA. One center even operates at 15% overhead. If all data centers operated at the same efficiency as Google's, the U.S. alone would save enough electricity to power every household within the city limits of Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C. combined.

• Notes about Carbon savings/calculations

  Efficient data centers allow to save 0.3 metric tonnes of CO2 per server annually.

• Comments on other resources saved

  Water savings:  On average, two gallons of water are consumed for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced in the U.S. By using less electricity to power Google's computing infrastructure, the company also saves fresh water. Every year Google's efficient data centers save hundreds of millions of gallons of drinking water simply by consuming less electricity.

  On top of those savings, Google aims to minimize the amount of fresh water directly consumed by the facilities. In its last report the company noted that by the end of 2008, two of the facilities will run on 100% recycled water. Google is pleased to announce that it has achieved that goal, and is planning for recycled water to provide 80% of its total data center water consumption by 2010.

• The project has internal verification for results

Making it Happen

• Barriers experienced during the initiation of the project