Much has been made about Great River Energy’s LEED-platinum certified headquarters building, as it was the first building in Minnesota to receive the USGBC’s highest designation.

But data centers can be an incredibly large energy user. The Great River Energy IT department helped ensure that the data center in the headquarters building would be just as efficient as the other high-profile building features. It may not be as noticeable as a 200-kW wind turbine, but it’s definitely just as important. The team recently completed a white paper that discusses how to evaluate and develop a green IT center.

Some key topics discussed in the paper include:
-Goals to avoid hardware purchases and maintenance costs; improve infrastructure manageability; increase application availability
-Incorporate efficient planning; the Great River Energy data center used a hot-aisle, cold-aisle layout with optimally placed HVAC equipment, 24-inch raised floors and EnergyStar-rated equipment, all of which serves to minimize energy usage.
-Working more efficiently across the company, including using teleconferencing and video conferencing services, all supported by the IT department; the data center helps enable that efficiency.