Like a lot of people these days, I try to practice what I preach about saving energy at our home. My office computer, LCD monitor, printer, and other accessories are turned off every night with a switched power strip. Our iPhone® chargers are unplugged when not in use. Just about anything that runs on electricity is ENERGY STAR® rated – ceiling fans, TVs, dishwashers, freezers, you name it.  I’ll spare you all the details.

Little things do add up – and make a big difference in saving energy and protecting the environment.
 
And that’s what makes Emerson’s new St. Louis data center so impressive. Our design team originally set its sights on earning a LEED Silver Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, which would have been good enough. But by paying attention to the details, we’re going for a higher level – LEED Gold Certification.

The St. Louis data center is one piece of a much larger picture. After years of operating more than 100 data centers around the world, Emerson is consolidating to four state-of-the-art facilities. The potential for energy savings – and improvements in system availability while reducing costs – are enormous. The St. Louis facility alone is projected to cut energy use by an estimated 31 percent compared with a traditional data center design.

Among the most obvious energy efficiency features are windows that bring daylight into the building’s core. Of course, these aren’t just any windows. To maintain the building’s structural integrity – and system availability – in the event of a major storm, the windows are made of glass strong enough to withstand hurricanes and an F-3 tornado.

We’re talking wind speeds over 200 MPH. Trains overturned. Forests uprooted.  Dorothy and Toto soaring well past the Land of Oz.  But the data center will keep on humming.

The daylight also creates an environment sure to boost the spirits – and performance – of the typical data center dweller who’s more accustomed to workspaces best described as “cave-like.” We think it will give us an edge in employee recruitment and retention.
 
In addition to saving energy, the facility is helping to generate 100 kW to support the facility’s IT load with one of the largest rooftop solar arrays used by a data center. The 7,800 square-foot photovoltaic array is angled at 20 degrees to maximize sun exposure. 

Of course, we wouldn’t be practicing what we preach without Emerson Network Power’s Energy Logic strategy. The St. Louis data center is promoting efficiency by adopting Energy Logic’s 10-strategy roadmap that the three most critical constraints faced by data center managers today – power, cooling and space. By saving energy at the IT level, Energy Logic generates a cascade of savings throughout the data center – without compromising performance or availability.

Throughout the facility, the latest power, cooling and monitoring innovations from Emerson Network Power are promoting efficiency, scalability and reliability. It’s been a major team effort among the people and products of Emerson Network Power brands such as Alber, Aperture, ASCO, Knurr and Liebert as well as our partners from the world’s leading IT companies, including Cisco, Dell, EMC and Sun.

We’ve all been doing plenty of preaching about energy efficiency. It’s good to see it come together in practice – in such a big way.