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BNY Mellon's Energy Star Data Center Saves Millions in Energy Costs

In the past five years, the facility outside Pittsburgh has saved 80 million kilowatts of energy use, trimming $7.5 million from the bank's energy bills, and is in the process of getting LEED certification as well. Read More

(Updated on July 24, 2024)

When it comes to the big picture of just how much savings are possible from boosting energy efficiency in data centers, you could do a lot worse than to look at BNY Mellon as a case study.

Back in August, The bank’s Northepoint Data Center near Pittsburgh, was the third facility to earn the Energy Star certification for data centers, but it has been working on energy efficiency for much longer, and in fact also helped pilot the Energy Star spec for data centers.

Over at American Banker, Keith Button profiles BNY’s efforts to bring an energy-saving mindset to every employee, and looks at how that’s impacted the company’s bottom line:

The bank has improved its power utilization efficiency, or PUE, which it has tracked since 2006, for all of its data centers: to 1.8 from 2.9 for its Tennessee site; to 1.5 from 2.8 for the Pennsylvania center; and to 1.9 from 2.7 for its New Jersey data center. That has added up to 80 million kilowatts, or $7.5 million in avoided energy costs, says Dan Gaffney, director of BNY Mellon’s critical infrastructure group.

Much of the energy savings has come from relatively basic measures: sealing raised-floor cracks, maintaining a correct static air pressure under the raised floor and upgrading to more efficient blade servers, for example. “You try to account for where every single watt is being used,” Gaffney says.

Vince Renaud, managing partner of the Uptime Institute, which creates the tier standards for data centers, says data center operators who target energy costs are looking for the easiest and least expensive energy reduction plays-blanking panels so cold air doesn’t escape to a hot aisle, for example. “It’s amazing the efficiencies you get just by doing the simple things.”

There’s more in the full article at AmericanBanker.com, including how the firm is expecting to land LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council later this year.

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