While various manufacturers reported the results of Chill-Offs at the recentSilicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) event, the SVLG’s Demonstration Project report has gone largely overlooked and been under-reported. Bruce Myatt does his best to address this problem in his Zinc Whiskers column, which appears in the next issue ofMission Criticaldue out later this month. (Don’t look on our website just yet either, perhaps by the end of the week.) Bruce, of course, is a founder of theCritical Facilities Roundtableand very active in the SVLG. He’s the guy who helps keep me on top of SVLG activities. All ES readers interested in data centers should read this 28-page report, which is available directly now from the SVLG.

SVLG member companies conducted 17 case studies aimed to demonstrate energy savings by using technology available today. These SVLG member companies made available time, equipment, expertise, and facilities to make these tests possible. The findings confirmed that a variety of techniques and technologies could be employed now to produce considerable energy savings and that these are viable for commercial data centers. I think we all expected that.

More surprising: The projections were even better than the SVLG expected and validate the EPA’s estimates of the efficiency of technology maturity. Data center technology is on track to meet the EPA’s best-case scenarios, concludes the report.  Also the SVLG now believes that legacy retrofits can almost be as efficient as new commissions. Existing data centers can also contribute to reducing energy use.  In addition, the SVLG concluded that holistic IT transformation initiatives deliver a greater impact than site improvements. These last two points could eventually be a point of contention in many organizations as green and efficiency initiatives will require both sides of the house, facilities and IT, to collaborate if goals are to be achieved without reducing reliability as the initiatives are rolled out.The SVLG plans a new round of demonstrations, for which they should be applauded. Meanwhile, do your part. Get a copy of this report, digest the results, and bring it to the attention of a colleague.