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Google gave details of the design changes that cut power use in its data centers which helped contribute to 12-month average PUE of 1.15 for facilities of 5MW and above.
 
The company issued the details on its data center operations in terms of power, temperature, servers, and cooling. 

On server design it said: ‘We use very efficient voltage regulator modules to make sure that our highest energy users are the components that do the actual computing work. We’ve cut out 2 of the AC / DC conversion stages by putting back-up batteries on the server racks themselves. Our servers lose only a little over 15% of the electricity they pull from the wall during power conversion steps, less than half of what is lost in a typical server. Efficient power conversion pays real dividends: we estimate an annual savings of over 500 kWh per server over a typical system.’

"Google’s data center electricity use is about 0.01% of total worldwide electricity use and less than 1 percent of global data center electricity use in 2010. This result is in part a function of the ... lower electricity use per server for Google’s highly optimized servers, said Jonathan Koomey, Growth in Data Center Electricity Use 2005 to 2010.

The firm has servers built to a bespoke specification without graphics chips, network controllers, or modems.

‘We optimize our servers and racks to use minimal fan power, and the fans are controlled to spin only as fast as necessary to keep the server temperature below a threshold. We encourage all of our suppliers to produce components that operate efficiently whether they are idle, operating at full capacity, or at lower usage levels, a property we call "energy proportionality."Our published studies indicate that more energy-proportional systems can cut in half the total energy used by large data center operations,’ it said.

As of Q2 2011 Google said the trailing twelve-month (TTM), energy-weighted average PUE for Google data centers with an IT load of at least 5MW and time-in-operation of at least 6 months, is 1.15, with some individual data centers as low as 1.11.

'We achieved this result without the use of any exotic techniques that the EPA report assumes are necessary to reach this level of efficiency, its says.


google power distirbution

On the cooling side Google recommends the switching off of dehumidifying and reheating functions on CRACS. 'Most are set to dehumidify air to 40% and reheat air if the return air is too cold, but these functions aren't needed.' 

The data centers listed by Google are:
South Carolina
Located located in Mount Holly Industrial Park between the towns of Goose Creek and Moncks Corner.

Council Bluffs, Iowa:
On the border of Iowa and Nebraska at the foot of historic Loess Hills.

Douglas County, Georgia:
Located just outside of Atlanta, our Douglas County Georgia data center uses grey water for cooling.

Mayes County, Oklahoma
The newest data center to go on-line, the Oklahoma facility is located in the Mid-America Industrial Park in the middle of Mayes County and the Cherokee Nation.

Lenoir, North Carolina
Located near the historic downtown.

The Dalles, Oregon
The first data center Google built from the ground up.

Hamina, Finland
Located in a former paper mill on the Bay of Finland and employs an innovative sea water cooling system.

St Ghislain, Belgium
Located in the Walloon region of Belgium, this data center uses recycled water from a nearby canal to cool its servers, reducing the need for fresh water.

Google's latest update on its data center operations.