The cool, temperate climate of Stockton, located in northeast England, doesn’t just make for a nice place to live and work. The climate makes it the perfect spot for HP’s energy-efficient Wynyard data center. That’s because the new facility takes advantage of the cool outside air originating from the North Sea to maintain optimum internal conditions at a fraction of the running costs associated with conventional cooling systems.
Projected to help HP save approximately 40 percent in energy usage compared with a traditional data center, the Wynyard facility illustrates HP’s ability to use innovative design and technology to optimize resources, enable sustainable growth and improve the environmental performance of its operations and those of its customers. With Wynyard as a model, HP customers can construct and operate more efficient data centers that cut their power and cooling costs, and shrink their carbon footprint.
The innovative design of the building features an unusual 15-foot raised floor on which HP servers and storage equipment sit. Massive fans bring in cold air from outside into a mixing chamber where it is combined with the warm air generated by the IT equipment. The air is then fed into a large cavity under the floor, called a plenum, and through vents in the floor into cold aisles located between the rows of equipment. The air flows through the front of the high-density server racks and is exhausted through the back of the enclosures. The warm air is then pulled up and again recycled with the incoming cool air to deliver a constant temperature of 24 degrees Celsius.
The cooling techniques used in the site help HP cut data center-related CO2 emissions by 12,500 metric tonnes and reduce energy consumption by 25,000 megawatt hours per year. The building design also allows HP to obtain a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.2 versus 1.5 found in a traditional data center. This represents 83 percent efficiency versus 66 percent efficiency.
Wynyard won the ''Green Data Centre Award'' in December 2008, in recognition of the environmental considerations in its design and operation.
Information on HP Critical Facilities Consulting and Design
