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Datacenters

Self-Paced Data Center Training Tool:

Improving the energy efficiency of data centers can save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, which makes the business more competitive and the operations more reliable.  LBNL has just completed a website offering tools and information to capture cost-effective savings opportunities during the design of new data centers or the retrofit of existing ones. The site enables users to:

• Diagnose Energy Inefficiencies and Rate a Data Center's "Energy IQ" — by comparing your data center to the benchmarking results for top performers

• Specify State-of-the-art Solutions — using detailed guides to 67 best practices

• Generate Clear Design Intent Documents — using pre-defined design intent tool "template" for recording data center energy efficiency objectives, strategies

• Evaluate Cost-Effectiveness — by considering both the "straight economics" of energy efficiency improvements, as well as non-energy benefits that are central to making the business case for investing in improved efficiency

• Explore Real-world Examples — that show the application of best practices and the magnitude of savings that can result

• Calculate Impacts and Savings — using practical software tools to help users achieve energy savings and make the economic case to decision-makers and managers at the data centers and management

• Stay on the Cutting Edge — with information on leading-edge research and new technologies just emerging in the marketplace

• Applications — by following a series of exercises to evaluate real data centers

Learn More — using links to an extensive body of resources from the trade press and research institutions

Visit the tool online at http://hightech.lbl.gov/DCTraining/

Conference Report: Servers and Data Centers

LBNL cosponsored the recent conference on Enterprise Servers and Data Centers: Opportunities for Energy Savings, held on the campuses of Sun Microsystems and AMD.

Day 1 was a working session entitled Conference on Enterprise Servers and Data Centers: Opportunities for Energy Savings. Industry leaders and energy efficiency experts opened this meeting by discussing trends and challenges in the marketplace. A panel of end users emphasized their desire for improved efficiencies in data centers. The second half of the day focused on identifying roadblocks to efficiency and drive the group toward solutions with the help of relevant case studies and small group working sessions.

Day 2 focused on the Challenges in Building Operations and Management for Owners/Operators of Service Providers and Enterprise Data Centers and the Development of the ENERGY STAR Building Benchmark for Mission Critical Facilities. Industry experts opened the meeting by discussing the relationship between energy efficiency and data center reliability as well examining the potential for improved energy performance in data centers. Both current and future technologies were addressed in these discussions. During the late morning session, ENERGY STAR program managers led a group discussion on the continuing development of energy performance rating tools for data centers, financial service centers, and telecom facilities.

Proceedings from the meeting, including video and sound clips, can be found here.

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Measuring and Managing Energy Use in Data Centers

With annual energy costs per square foot that are 10 to 30 times those of typical office buildings, data centers are an important target in energy-saving efforts. They operate continuously, which means their electricity demand always is contributing to peak utility system demand, an important fact given that utility pricing increasingly reflects time-dependent tariffs. Energy-efficiency best practices can hold the key to significant savings, while improving reliability and yielding other non-energy benefits. LBNL recently reported findings in HPAC Engineering, including summaries of best practices developed from an extensive study of energy use in 22 data centers.  The article can be found here.

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Laboratories

Measuring and Managing Energy Use in Laboratories

Labs21 developed a web-based database tool to collect, analyze and display energy benchmarking data for laboratories. The tool allows a user to input laboratory characteristics and energy use data via conventional web-forms. The data remains anonymous to other users of the database. In order to perform data analysis, the user specifies a metric of interest, and can set criteria to filter the data set by lab-area ratio, occupancy hours, and climate zone.  The tool then presents the data analysis in graphical and tabular format. The benchmarking can be done for whole-building metrics (e.g. Site BTU/sf/yr) as well as system level metrics (e.g. Ventilation Watts/cfm). The database currently has data on over 70 public and private sector laboratory facilities, mostly chemical and biological laboratories, located in several different climate zones. Some illustrative findings from the tool:

• The total site energy use intensity varies from about 200,000 BTU/sf-yr to almost 800,000 BTU/sf-yr. For comparison, the average office building site energy use intensity in the U.S. is about 90,000 BTU/sf-yr.

• Of particular interest is the relationship between these measured total peak electrical loads and estimated peak plug loads used during design. None of the facilities have total peak electrical loads more than 15 W/sf. Yet, it is common for designers to assume plug loads alone at 10-12 W/sf or more.

• Ventilation system efficiency varies widely from 0.3 W/cfm to almost 2.0 W/cfm. This metric is fairly independent of operating parameters such as weather and is largely driven by air handler efficiency and pressure drop. Therefore, a high value for this metric almost always indicates an opportunity to reduce energy use through efficient fans, motors, and low-pressure drop design features.

News From the Hood

This department continues the tradition of LBNL’s News From the Hood Newsletter—covering the latest work on the energy efficient Berkeley Fume Hood for laboratory-type facilities—which we are now merging with High-Tech News.  Back issues can be found here.

Fume hoods exhaust large volumes of air at great expense. The energy to filter, move, cool, heat or reheat, and in some cases scrub (clean) this air is one of the largest loads in most lab facilities. Fume hoods frequently operate 24 hours/day. Since many laboratories have multiple hoods, they often dictate a lab’s required airflow and thus the supply and exhaust systems’ capacity. The result is larger fans, chillers, boilers, and ducts compared to systems having less exhaust. Consequently, fume hoods are a major factor in making a typical laboratory four- to five-times more energy intensive than a typical commercial space.

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Human-As-Mannequin Results Garners Strong Industry Interest and Use

LBNL has developed a standardized dynamic “human-as-mannequin” (HAM) test protocol for laboratory fume hoods.

Dynamic Tests: Our results well below half of limit for static test. Static Tests: same results.  CEC/PIER funded side-by-side results (same manufacture, same room, same time). 

A test facility constructed at LBNL consists of two side-by-side six-foot hoods (one conventional hood operating at approximately 100 fpm face velocity, and one “Berkeley Hood” operating at approximately half the exhaust flow rate).  For purposes of equivalency it was agreed (as stated in the protocol) that under HAM testing the Berkeley hood was to contain equal or better than the conventional hood, or no higher than 0.10 ppm SF6 (the ANSI/AIHA Z9.5 as-installed static test threshold).  Both hoods were tested and passed the standard static tracer gas test thus assuring that the “bar,” based on a conventional hood, was high (higher than many hoods only meeting the Cal/OSHA face velocity requirement).

Both the Berkeley Hood and the conventional hood performed very well, showing that the Berkeley Hood, with its superior design offers equal worker protection even with half the air volume. 

ASHRAE 110 AI static test performance rating

Average dynamic HAM SF6 test leakage concentrations

The dynamic HAM test results are an average of nine tests for each hood (three sets of left, center, and right position tests). Note that despite the dynamic nature of the tests, the average leakage rate was substantially below the ANSI/AHIA as-installed (AI) threshold. Leakage as high as 0.10 ppm would be considered good (as that is the allowable AI leakage under a static test). In fact, not only did the hoods perform well on average, but none of the nine individual test exceeded the threshold.

The University of California has subsequently used the HAM protocol to test 25 conventional hoods and found that most had containment problems with the sash fully open.  The one exception was the Berkeley Hood.  All hoods performed well at below the CAL-OSHA requirement of 100 feet per minute face velocity.

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CAL-OSHA Grants Variance Berkeley Hood Demonstrations

There is a general industry standard for fume hoods to operate with a face velocity of 100 feet per minute. This is an easy standard to design for and measure, but it does not assure containment or safety. Cal/OSHA adopted this standard in the 1970s, giving it the force of law (which is not the case in other states).

In other parts of the country, hoods have been operated safely at much lower velocities (e.g. 60 feet per minute at I.E. Dupont). In any case, many conventional hoods fail to achieve containment at 100 feet per minute or greater.  Experts now realize there is little or no correlation between face velocity and containment. Hood design, installation, and operation have more to do with containment than face velocity.

As verified in our Human-as-Mannequin tests (see previous article), LBNL’s “Berkeley Hood” achieves containment at much lower face velocities, promising energy savings up to 75%.  The CAL-OSHA standards have stood as a barrier to innovation and commercialization of new hood technologies.  LBNL submitted an application for a variance in April 2002. Cal-OSHA witnessed various tests and—four years later—approved a variance thereby allowing field tests to go forward.

Berkeley Hood Industry Partners

• Labconco – built Berkeley Hood for static test at San Diego State University

• Genie Scientific – provided hood components for 6-foot Berkeley Hood

• Jamestown Metal – provided hoods for side-by-side HAM testing

• TekAir – provided controls for BH for use in demos

• Exposure Control Technologies – independent testing of Berkeley Hood perform

• Indoor Air Professionals – tested Berkeley Hood at UC campuses

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Fume Hood Calculator Garners New Users

Our web-based fume-hood energy calculator can be used to test the energy and cost impacts of improving component efficiencies (e.g. fans or space conditioning equipment), modifying face velocities, and varying energy prices.  Supply air set points can be varied, as can the type of reheat energy.  Several hundred weather locations around the world are available.  The calculator allows for an instantaneous comparison of two scenarios

Pfizer – with five linear miles of fume hoods in its labs – has begun using the calculator to evaluate in-house energy use and savings opportunities.  Phoenix Controls, a major provider of hood controls, is using the calculator to help market its products.  Account managers at Pacific Gas and Electric Company are using the calculator as a means of providing technical support on energy management to its high-tech customers.

This report is for the CEC side by side testing - not 25 hoods by the UC.

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Cleanrooms

Measuring and Managing Energy Use in Cleanrooms

Combining high air-recirculation rates and energy-intensive processes, cleanrooms are 20 to 100 times as costly to operate on a per-square-foot basis as conventional commercial buildings. Additionally, they operate 24 hr a day, seven days a week, which means their electricity demand always is contributing to peak utility system demand, an important fact given increasing reliance on time-dependent tariffs. LBNL recently reported findings in HPAC Engineering, including summaries of best practices developed from an extensive study of energy use in 28 cleanrooms.  The article can be found here.

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Small is Beautiful: Minienvironment Field Test Results

Cleanrooms have extraordinarily high rates of energy use in part because they are traditionally configured to maintain ultra-clean conditions over very large areas.  However, sensitive processes requiring high cleanliness levels are only carried out in relatively small areas within the larger cleanroom.  “Minienvironment” technologies—essentially a cleanroom within a cleanroom—are used  to isolate these sensitive processes, which reduces the risk of contamination. LBNL field tests have shown that—if cleanliness conditions are appropriately relaxed in the main cleanroom through the use of minienvironments, significant energy savings can also result.   In addition, we found that the efficiency of minienvironments varies widely, depending largely on the quality of the fan filter unit used to provide filtered air to the minienvironment.  Go here for more on LBNL’s minienvironment research.

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Recent Publications

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