HP intros wind-cooled centre
Hewlett-Packard's newest green data centre in northeast England is the company's most energy-efficient plant to date, cooled entirely by cold wind blowing off the North Sea, reports ZDNet.
HP says the 360 000 square foot Wynyard centre, located near Billingham, is 40% more energy-efficient than traditional data centres, thanks to the harnessing of natural wind that keeps the hall at a constant 24 degrees Celsius, or approximately 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
The outside temperature only rises above that for about 20 hours per year.
Solar cells get green twist
US researchers have devised a way to make flexible solar cells with silicon wires that use just 1% of the material needed to make conventional solar cells, states CNET News.
The eventual hope is to make thin, light solar cells that could be incorporated into clothing, for instance, but the immediate benefit is cheaper and easier-to-install solar panels, say researchers.
The new material uses conventional silicon configured into micron-sized wires (a micron is one-millionth of a meter) instead of brittle wafers and encases them in a flexible polymer that can be rolled or bent.
Xhead = Carbon Trust awards £500k loan
The Carbon Trust has awarded its first interest-free loan of £500 000 (R6 million), the maximum amount that can be offered under the government-backed company's Big Business Refit energy efficiency loan scheme, writes Computing.co.uk.
The loan was provided to Bedford-based IT support company Blue Chip and has allowed the firm to install energy-efficient evaporative cooling technology at its new five-acre data centre site.
Brian Meredith, Blue Chip MD, says the cooling technology would cut indirect electricity use within the data centre by 60%, saving it £100 000 (R1.2 million) a year and allowing it to repay the loan within four years.
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