TINLEY PARK, Ill. — Yahoo was named as winner of the 2014 DataCenter Dynamics North American Award, “Improved Data Center Energy Efficiency,” for its joint data center project with SynapSense®, a Panduit company, that is saving 7.5 million kilowatt hours of energy annually. The award is sponsored by The Green Grid and recognizes Yahoo’s commitment to drive greater energy efficiency in data center operations through the process of measurement, benchmarking, analysis, recommendation, and implementation.

As measurement is key to managing energy efficiency, the focus of this project relied on capturing granular cooling metrics. SynapSense and Yahoo worked together to reduce cooling costs by deploying the SynapSense Wireless Environmental Monitoring Solution, improving airflow management, leveraging air economizers, and deploying SynapSense Active Control to dynamically match cooling requirements to changes in the IT load. Their joint retrofit project at the Yahoo data centers in Quincy, Washington, saved nearly double the original target announced in March 2014.

“At Yahoo, we are honored by the recognition of the Data Center Energy Efficiency award by Data Center Dynamics North America,” said Brett Illers, Yahoo’s manager of energy and sustainability strategy, who oversaw the project. “The award highlights Yahoo’s extraordinary innovation and ongoing commitment to deploy innovative sustainability solutions, whether through retrofitting our existing facilities on-site or developing and building new data center designs, with the objective of operating the most energy efficient data centers in the world.”

The project included installation of the SynapSense wireless environmental monitoring. SynapSense and Yahoo teamed to utilize SynapSense advanced tools and metrics to “balance” the raised floor for effective distribution of airflow and then optimize data center cooling. SynapSense Active Control was used to automatically maintain efficient operating conditions by dynamically matching cooling to the varying equipment and conditions in the data center.

“We are proud to be partnering with Yahoo in this tremendous accomplishment and applaud them for winning this prestigious award,” said Khaled Nassoura, vice president of the Panduit Data Center business unit. “Together we exceeded our expectations for the project by delivering 44 percent cooling energy savings, which resulted in a real and tangible ROI.”

SynapSense was acquired by Panduit in May 2014. For more information, visit www.synapsense.com.

Publication date: 2/2/2015

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