Quality Technology Services (QTS) is a participating company in the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Climate Corps Program as it continues to improve the energy efficiency of its 12 state-of-the-art facilities.
QTS is hosting an EDF Climate Corps fellow this summer to research strategies and provide recommendations to QTS as they strive to validate power consumption and reduce the company’s electricity use. The fellow, Sukrit Sehgal, a Master of Business Administration candidate from The College of William and Mary, is working with engineers and data center operations managers at the QTS Atlanta Metro Data Center, the second largest data center in the world, as well as the QTS Suwanee Data Center in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.
The two facilities already utilize cost-saving and sustainable features and operations. For example, QTS is currently dedicating eight acres of roof space for rain water capture for the makeup basin to support the cooling infrastructure, using waterside economizers for free cooling when outside temperatures allow, computational fluid dynamics modeling, and copper efficiency measures, among other initiatives. QTS anticipates that engaging with the EDF Climate Corps Program will result in additional energy efficient measures and a further improvement in power usage effectiveness (PUE) in the company’s data centers. QTS is also targeting new emerging metrics associated with the data center industry such as water usage effectiveness, carbon usage effectiveness and energy reuse effectiveness.
“As we have grown to become the nation’s third largest data center provider, we have also strived to be at the forefront of industry sustainability practices,” Brian Johnston, chief technology officer- QTS said. “We are proud to participate in EDF’s Climate Corps and look forward to capturing new energy efficiencies that will allow us to pass on cost-savings to our customers while doing our part to conserve valuable resources.”
“Prior to my arrival at QTS, the company had already worked hard to reduce its energy dependency, which challenges me to examine new and innovative green initiatives,” Sehgal said. “Some of the measures that I am working on this summer with QTS will be industry firsts. I am fortunate to be working with an amazing group of people, who are as excited about energy efficiency as I am.”