Pentadyne Teams With Intel, Sun, Other Industry Leaders to Prove Data Center Energy and Cooling Savings With DC Architecture

Pentadyne Power Corporation ( www.pentadyne.com ), the world's leading commercial manufacturer of clean energy storage systems using advanced composite flywheel technology, announced its participation in a milestone demonstration project at the Sun Microsystems' campus in Silicon Valley to prove that the nation's data centers can conserve massive amounts of energy and drastically reduce their utility bills by using direct current (DC) architecture to run power-hungry servers connected to the Internet.

The best minds on energy and data center issues -- including researchers and system engineers at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ( www.lbl.gov ), California Energy Commission ( www.energy.ca.gov/commission ), Sun Microsystems ( www.sun.com ) (NASDAQ: SUNW), Intel ( www.intel.com ) (NASDAQ: INTC), Cisco ( www.cisco.com ) (NASDAQ: CSCO), Pentadyne and others -- joined together to develop a working demonstration to prove how the nation's data centers could amass billions of dollars in utility savings by using DC architecture that would conserve thousands of gigawatt-hours of energy per year. One gigawatt-hour is enough energy to power more than 60,000 average homes for a year.

With 17% of the nation's data centers located in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas, the massive reduction in energy utilization from DC-powering could help mitigate California's energy crisis and summertime rolling blackouts. On a nationwide basis, the reduced demand on utility power generation could cut yearly emissions of smog-forming NOx by two million pounds and reduce carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions by nearly a billion pounds, according to US EPA utility power plant emission statistics.

The technology demonstration is being conducted at Sun Microsystems in Newark, Calif. Pentadyne supplied the flywheel-based clean energy storage system connected to a rectifier that converts the incoming utility grid AC into 400-volt DC power. Pentadyne's fast spinning composite flywheel replaces conventional UPS (uninterruptible power supply) battery banks that store energy to seamlessly continue power to the data center equipment in the event of a blackout or other power disturbance.

The demonstration project proves that using DC power instead of alternating current (AC) can reduce energy needed to run data centers by up to 20 percent and improve overall system reliability. Servers from major manufacturers have been tested to operate within the DC architecture.

"Powering and cooling today's data centers has become a critical factor as new high-density blade servers come on the scene while energy costs are at all-time highs," said Pentadyne President and CEO, Mark McGough. "The traditional approach of using AC power and chemical batteries in large data centers will no longer be a viable solution in the near term. Combining DC-powered equipment with clean energy storage flywheel-UPS systems eliminates costly, maintenance-laden and polluting batteries, radically cuts cooling system needs and the energy to run those systems, and improves overall server reliability while dramatically reducing floorspace needs. We're very pleased to be a part of this very significant technology demonstration."

According to a recent article on the subject in Energy & Power Management magazine, "Computers and servers equipped with DC power supplies, instead of AC power supplies, produce 20-40% less heat, reduce power consumption by up to 30%, increase server reliability, offer flexibility to installations, and experience decreased maintenance requirements:

--  Lower component count leads to higher system efficiencies, greater
    reliability, reduced maintenance cost and lower total cost of ownership
--  The system is modular and flexible, so it can grow with load
    requirement
--  System front-end components can be located in non-conditioned spaces
    or on the raised floor near the load
--  Busway provides a modular "go-as-you-grow" strategy for dc
    distribution as rack population changes
--  Busway provides a double end-feed feature to permit redundant dc
    sources at critical loads
--  Down-stream static and transfer switches are not required, as the
    voltage matched DC systems can inherently be coupled together
--  DC distribution eliminates harmonics
--  The system enables simplified positive grounding or negative grounding
--  This DC system has no requirement for a UPS in order to provide high
    system reliability with utility power outage ride through (a rectifier and
    Pentadyne flywheel clean energy storage are used instead)
--  DC distribution is easily adaptable to green energy alternatives such
    as solar, wind and fuel cell technologies.
--  DC distribution eliminates power factor concerns

These benefits lead to three even greater improvements. The DC systems reduces heat load at server racks by 20-40%, reduces power consumption by up to 30%, and increases server reliability."

DC Power Increases Efficiency and Enhances Reliability