Nov 18, 2008 : RRDC Adds Outside Air Cooling

📅 November 18, 2008 - On the outskirts of Denver, the Red Rocks Data Center (redrocksdatacenter.com -> hostinger.com) will now be cooled for more than 80 percent of the year by cool mountain air, after installing an air economizer that pulls in and filters outside air to cool customers' servers.


According to the company's Monday announcement, Morrison, Colorado-based RRDC, which provides managed IT infrastructure for colocation, dedicated servers and virtual private servers, has installed a Trane Voyager (trane.com) air economizer system, cutting the its cooling costs to one-sixth of its previous consumption using conventional air conditioning.

"By cutting our consumption of green house gas emitting, coal-fired electricity, we have put our money where our mouth is in regards to becoming one of Colorado's greenest data centers while passing the cost savings onto our customers," RRDC managing partner Tom Nats said in a statement. "This system raises the bar in power efficiency for the modern data center and is the model of the future."

RRDC's new Trane Voyage unit includes an air economizer (the 45 degree angle piece at the unit's lower left).

Attempting to become one of the country's most environmental friendly data centers, RRDC has adopted this first-of-its-kind solution that reduces its operational costs and environmental impact, and is continuing to make further improvements.

"We will also be adding duct work to capture hot server air and use it to heat our office space during the winter months," Nats added. "This allows us to virtually eliminate our heating costs."

Housed in a former NASA satellite uplink facility, RRDC has previously been recognized by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment at its "Environmental Leadership Awards" for its energy efficiency. RRDC is also working with the Colorado School of Mines Engineering Department to help design a data center expansion area in the most environmentally friendly means possible.

RRDC has setup a real-time air economizer status page that shows how much of the data center is being cooled by outside air, the current outside air temperature and the amount of the company has saved to-date since installing the air economizer. The page, according to the website, "is not only for public viewing, we created it to share with other data center managers to show not only the money that can be saved using an economizer, but how relatively easy it is to implement one in their data center."

Many companies in the industry have explored the use of air economizers including Sun Microsystems (sun.com), which found during its "Chill-Off" challenges that air economizers can be effectively used in higher temperature climates, opening a huge amount of the world to air economizers, not just cold climates. Intel (intel.com) reached a similar conclusion in late September when it released the results of an experiment in a temperate desert climate, showing that air economizers show tremendous promise even in extreme heat.