Intel Community: IT@Intel Blog

If you invested one dollar and it returned 10 dollars, you'd think that was an excellent return wouldn't you? So what if you could get this same 10X return on energy? An industrial heat pump system called Heat Recovery where an additional 100 kW of power used returns 1 megawatt of heat energy.

This return or ratio of energy in vs energy out is called Coefficient Of Performance (COP). A resistance heater uses 1kW of power to produce 1kW of heat, providing a COP of 1. Residential Heat Pumps are efficient but very dependent on ambient weather conditions and produce less usable heat when outside conditions are colder. So how about a system that works at a COP of 10 regardless of weather conditions outside?

I hope you have seen our discussion on whether the data center is green or efficient Greening Data Centers or Make 'em Efficient? but either way you slice it the data center consumes energy. How can we reuse that energy for other purposes? Check out Part 1 of a two-part podcast (look for this next week) that describes how we have designed a system to capture the heat coming off all the equipment in the data center and recycle it to heat offices and warm water for cafeterias and other domestic water purposes.

Check out the brief for more details Data Center Heat Recovery Helps Intel Create Green Facility.
Update: Part II of the podcast series is now available Part II: What if you invested a dollar and it returned 10? This is where I get into discussing the numbers and the total cost of ownership.

1 Comments Permalink Tags: power, green, data_center, data_center_cooling, heat_recovery, cop, data_center_power, energy_efficiency, energy

Just finished my green belt project analyzing how effective web analytics is in identifying applications no longer required by IT (and should be archived) . the project went well I had some interesting data to show for it and it def drove a decision.

I'd have to say that LSS gave me some new tools to use. The templates we use internally are ok but If I was outside I'd probably stop by http://lssacademy.com/downloads/ and check out their C&E and FMEA.

Some advice to others looking to start a GB project I'd like to mention a couple of general things I learned from setting up and running mine:

Don't boil the ocean - Improve an existing process as your green belt project.
Use Six Sigma tools to measure process output and identify where failures impact results (FMEA, C&E, etc).
Apply Lean Thinking to a step that has a lot of failure.
Measure improvement using Six Sigma tools (remesure your failure rate / speed / or what every you has as the cause of your failure).