Crosby's cooking on Green Gas!

Today, Crosby have committed to self power generation which is to be installed in its multi-million pound data centre over the coming months.

Environmental issues are becoming a top concern for Crosby since they consume so much electricity in their data centre, electricity costs are huge and are more importantly damaging the environment.

Crosby will generate its own power, from the data centre site itself, using a combination of fuel cell technology, wind turbines and solar panels.

Matt Wilson, Managing Director, said: “It takes a lot of energy to run a corporate data centre. Estimates vary, but most sources agree that a typical data centre uses anywhere between 10 and 40 watts of electricity per square foot. For a large corporate data centre that means a significant annual energy cost. With fuel prices on the rise, it does not take a genius to figure out that an energy-efficient data centre means budget savings.”

For this reason, as well as for general environmental concerns, energy efficiency is on a lot of people's minds. New technologies are cropping up everywhere to increase efficiency and environmental friendliness in the data centre. These span everything from more energy efficient HVAC systems to completely solar powered buildings.

Choosing energy efficient equipment, as well as an efficient HVAC and a well thought-out UPS load distribution, is pure common sense at this point for Crosby. According to Matt: “ The sheer price of implementing fuel cell, wind and solar energy was once a major roadblock. It used to be that it would take years for such an investment to pay off.”

Plus, with a combined fuel cell, wind and solar energy system there is a one-time investment that guarantees a supply of energy for years to come. He concludes: “After implementation you''ve just purchased 20 years or more of electricity at one fixed price. Knowing what your electric bill will be in 2030 has an appeal to many financial managers when they look at the price trends of conventional energy.

When our fuel cell, wind and solar energy systems are at peak generation, we could end up over generating electricity at times and sell it back to the electricity board, which has great commercial advantages for us by putting green power back into the UK national grid.”

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