EasyStreet unveils efficient data center

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Heat mapping in the EasyStreet data center.

EasyStreet Online Services Inc. invited the media and other IT professionals to see a newly overhauled data center Wednesday, touting the fact that it will save the company more than 524,000 kilowatt hours per year — enough to power about 50 average households.

Beaverton-based EasyStreet worked with Energy Trust of Oregon to analyze and model the airflow and energy efficiency within the data center and recommend improvements.

"I would like to say all the motivations for this were related to our efforts in company sustainability but we were running out of cooling capacity," said Rich Bader, EasyStreet CEO.

After mapping the air flow through the data center, engineers found the systems could be improved.

"Basically all we did was separate the hot air and the cold air," Bader said.

The new system contains the hot air exhausted by the computer equipment and the cold air dispensed by the computer room air conditioning units so it can be better controlled. As a result of the changes, two of the center's six air conditioners are regularly turned off.

Bader said the total cost of the overhaul was $130,000. Energy Trust provided EasyStreet with $65,000 in cash incentives for the energy-saving improvements, which will save the company about $36,000 in annual utility costs. EasyStreet is a customer of Portland General Electric.

According to a U.S. Department of Energy report from 2007, U.S. data centers will draw roughly 120 billion kilowatt hours per year, costing $7.4 billion by 2011 — or about 3 percent of the country's total electricity consumption. Last month, the agency directed $47 million in stimulus funds toward projects that improve data center efficiency.

"We're hoping what we've done will become common practice," Bader said.

EasyStreet is planning to build a new data center this year with new energy efficiency measures.