In a recent blog post, Daniel Lee of The Open Compute Project, discusses how its design decisions affected the operation and performance of its data center in Forest City, NC.

According to Lee, the company installed a direct expansion (DX) coil system based on ASHRAE 50-year design weather maximums. Although the summer was hot, the humidity was low and the company did not run its DX coils. Alternately, when humidity was high, the dry bulb temperature was low. The PUE for Forest City was 1.07 compared to its Prineville, OR, location, which was 1.09 during the same period.