IT departments are power guzzlers

Collectively, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. data centers consumed 61 billion kilowatt hours in 2006—enough to power five million households. Assuming 2.5 people per household, that's roughly the population of Calcutta.

In order to provide the "five nines" availability their customers require, today's data centers often consume as much power as large industrial facilities—so much, in fact, that most augment the power they receive from the nation's aging electrical grid with extensive backup systems. Over three or four years of operation, energy costs for a large data center can equal the initial capital outlay for the IT equipment itself.

A focus on energy efficiency

The incentive to reduce IT energy use is strong. It's particularly strong for utility companies since their IT departments use large amounts of the very power that the companies themselves produce, primarily by burning coal. Fortunately, some utility companies have found that reducing their IT infrastructures' energy needs also improves their carbon footprints—in effect, making them greener.

One of these is Atlanta's Southern Company, which serves 4.4 million customers in the southeastern U.S. through Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Gulf Power, and Mississippi Power. Southern Company's IT department, headed by CIO Becky Blalock, began focusing on energy efficiency in 1999 when it consolidated two data processing centers into one. "We started going green before most people were even talking about it," says Blalock, who has been with the company for 30 years.

Southern Company's data center consolidation resulted in reduced square footage, fewer pieces of equipment, retirement of old equipment, and more efficient lighting and cooling systems, which actually now use more power than the computing resources themselves. Together, these moves yielded a 78 percent energy savings in the first year alone.

Today Southern Company's IT infrastructure comprises a team of 1,100 people in 627 locations and has a budget of $330 million. The Atlanta data center uses 500,000 kilowatt hours of electricity every month, and usage is growing at 10 percent a year.

"Since we consolidated the data centers, we've continued to take additional steps to save energy," says Blalock. "One of the most important is virtualization." In the Microsoft Windows environment, the department is virtualizing the load of 190 servers on eight physical Dell servers, saving 300,000 kilowatt hours and reducing CO² emissions by more than 180 tons each quarter. In the UNIX environment, the center has standardized on Sun servers running Solaris and plans to begin virtualizing those by the end of 2008.

The result, according to Dan Traynor, director of IT infrastructure and head of the department's Green Place to Work initiative, is that although the number of servers supported is growing at 40 percent a year, their power consumption is growing at only 10 percent a year.

In another energy-saving effort scheduled for Q3 of this year, Blalock plans to put 20,000 of the company's 26,000 PCs into sleep mode when not in use. Total energy savings from that effort are expected to approach four million kilowatt hours per year or about $326,000.

Southern Company's 510 terabytes of stored data also are a target of energy-saving efforts. Blalock's department bought its first storage area network (SAN) in 2001 and has been consolidating storage ever since. The next step will be to improve storage allocation by implementing storage virtualization.

The Green Grid (www.thegreengrid.org), a national 80-member nonprofit industry organization focused on data center power and efficiency, has noted that despite the fact that power consumption is one of the most important issues facing IT today, there is a distinct shortage of guidelines and resources available to companies who want to drive change.

Green initiatives beyond IT

Southern Company has taken it upon itself to drive that change on its own, developing green initiatives that go well beyond its IT infrastructure.

One such initiative is the Smart Ride van pool program, now in its tenth year. Participating employees in and around metropolitan Atlanta save 1.3 million miles of driving per year—the equivalent of five tons of CO².

When it makes good business sense or improves work-life balance, managers may allow employees to telecommute. Currently, 150 call center agents work from home.

Yet another program is the advanced metering infrastructure instituted by Georgia Power, one of the first utilities in the U.S. to do so. Thus far, more than 10,000 smart meters have been installed, saving meter readers 40,000 miles of driving a month; the current plan is to upgrade all meters by 2012. Ultimately, the company will be able to offer electric usage information online and turn electrical service on and off remotely when people move.

Southern Company also has instituted an e-billing system under which 10 percent of the company's 4.4 million retail customers have so far elected to view and pay their electric bills online.

Blalock decides which new initiatives to institute by talking with other CIOs, colleagues, and suppliers like EMC. "The best information I get is from people we do business with," she says.

Generating alternative power

In the southeastern United States, where little wind or water power is available, generating cleaner power is a challenge. But Georgia Power has begun buying 22,500 megawatt-hours a year of green energy from the DeKalb County landfill, which produces methane. Customers can purchase that energy in 100-kilowatt-hour blocks for a $4.50 surcharge on their electric bills each month. Alabama Power and Mississippi Power also offer their customers a renewable energy choice. Customers may buy as many blocks as they wish, and the power is then added to the electric grid. So far, fewer than 1 percent of the company's retail customers have chosen this option, but several large commercial customers have including Robbins Air Force Base and IKEA.

Southern Company plans to invest nearly $4 billion in additional environmental controls over the next three years. It also partners with Georgia Tech and other organizations in exploring alternative energy sources such as a wind farm off the Georgia coast.

Providing alternative sources of energy to its service area on a large scale will probably happen well into the future. To date, Southern Company has spent nearly $400 million on environmental research and development. New technologies for coal, natural gas, and nuclear power offer the most promise, but the company is also experimenting with coburning renewable biomass energy sources.

A green future

Like other utility companies, Southern Company faces considerable challenges. It expects to add more than 1.1 million customers by 2025, which means it will need to add almost 15,000 megawatts of generating capacity to meet demand.

Traynor describes the IT department's Green Place to Work program as having four objectives. "We show leadership by cutting power consumption in IT," he says. "We show partnership by providing technology solutions like advanced metering. We encourage employees to vanpool, telecommute, and get involved in environmental action in their communities. And we're trying to do a better job of telling our green story."

"Most of what's green saves money," he continues. "It turns out being eco-friendly is good economics."