In the current cash-strapped economic environment, most organizations burdened with old data center infrastructures understand the inefficiencies in their daily operations but lack the capital to pursue efficiency upgrades. When done correctly, an efficiency upgrade to your data center not only reduces operating costs, but moreover can increase reliability, capacity to support high density, manageability and more.
After attending the “Mass Save” 2011 Open House, I believe the utility companies in Massachusetts resoundingly answered your proverbial cries through the rollout of a new financing program for energy efficiency upgrades. And not just any financing program of course… zero percent financing.
When the Green Communities Act was signed into law in July of 2008, it required Program Administrators (or “PAs” to the acronym-friendly utility companies) to develop a 3-year plan for energy efficiency and spending. Included in this plan was a commitment from the Program Administrators to invest $1.2 billion dollars between 2011 and 2012 to drive significant energy efficiency savings. While these funds are obviously shared across all programs, the goals are inarguably substantial.
Your data center is likely (by far) the most dense consumer of energy on a per square foot basis in your facility. On a recent project, we evaluated 12 months of utility bills for a customer whose data center was separately metered from the remainder of their office space. After calculating the average annual energy cost per square foot, the results were staggering:
Office Space - $3.15 per square foot Data Center - $134.74 per square foot
There are a lot of impactful projects you can undertake to improve the efficiency your facility, but given the statistics above, upgrading your data center may be the most compelling. Now, through a partnership with the Massachusetts Bankers Association, the utility companies are offering to not only provide you with aggressive incentives to upgrade your data center, they are offering to finance it as well.
Additional program details are set to be released in the next few weeks, but the initial information offered at the Mass Save event showed that the utility wants to buy the lease down to 0% financing and, if possible, structure it so that it is cash flow positive. In other words, if you are saving $1,000 a month as a result of your upgrades, your lease payment could be $900.
The momentum for efficiency in the data center is quickly spreading from the industry into the minds of CFOs and CEOs. With new creative ways to fund efficiency upgrades, there has never been a better time to finally part ways with your legacy, inefficient data center infrastructures.
