SEATTLE — Sabey Data Centers announced five of its buildings in Washington and northern Virginia earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) 2021 Energy Star certification.

Two of the buildings were awarded a score of 99 out of 100 points, and a third facility earned a perfect score of 100.

“This latest certification confirms Sabey’s core commitment and leadership role in energy-efficient data center design, construction, and operation,” said Rob Rockwood, president of Sabey Data Centers. “The more energy efficient our data centers become, the less electricity is consumed by our customers. The less electricity they use, the lower their costs.”

Energy Star certification signifies that an industrial facility performs in the top 25% of similar facilities nationwide for energy efficiency and meets strict energy efficiency performance levels set by the EPA.

Sabey’s Intergate.Columbia’s Building D in East Wenatchee, Washington, achieved a 100-point certification for its first year to seek certification. According to Jean Lupinacci, chief of the Energy Star Commercial and Industrial Branch, a 100-point score for a building means, literally, it is more energy efficient than 100% of similar buildings. 

At Sabey’s Intergate.Quincy campus in central Washington, Building A and Building C each received scores of 99, closely matching their 2020 scores of 99 and 100, respectively.

Intergate.Ashburn Building C in Loudon County, Virginia, received a score of 97, up from 95 last year; and Sabey’s Building 4 at Intergate.Seattle East received a score of 87 — a high score for a “pioneer” colocation data center.

“Every data center Sabey opens considers efficiency as a key criterion,” said John Sasser, chief technology officer for Sabey Data Centers. “For example, hot aisle containment provides consistent temperature, saves fan energy, and allows higher air handler discharge temperatures, which provides significant savings through extended economizer hours. In addition, we constantly assess and make sure we are hitting our goals. We study why we may have come up a little short, and we leverage areas of success.”

“We are focused on increasing the energy efficiency of our data centers, which is frequently judged by power usage effectiveness (PUE), measuring the ratio of total data center power usage versus the power used exclusively for the computing operations that take place,” Rockwell said. “There are many great claims made on PUE within the industry; however, obtaining real energy efficiency in a data center can be challenging based on location. The environments of our data centers in rural Quincy and East Wenatchee vary greatly from our data center in Virginia. We work diligently to make these data centers as efficient as possible, and this is reflected in our Energy Star scores.”