San Jose based Fortune Data Centers, said it achieved a PUE of 1.37 at full load at its new facility.

The company said the recently completed initial phase provides 7.86 Megawatts of IT critical load over two data rooms consisting of 43,000 fully powered and usable square feet of IT floor space in a 78,000 square foot building in San Jose, California.

The firm said it achieved the PUE number by eliminated raised floors and supplying cold air "from an overhead plenum, with insulated ducts for hot air return. Taking advantage of the natural density of cold air and the buoyancy of hot air significantly reduces the power required for air distribution. In addition to the energy savings, mounting cabinets directly on the floor reduces installation cost, increases seismic stability, and removes weight constraints."

Fortune's rationale is that "The cold air is forced up to the IT equipment through the raised floor;this requires considerable fan horsepower to push the cold air high enough to reach servers at the top of a standard rack or cabinet."

Other key efficiency features include the use of ambient cooling to supplement and optimize chilling capacity. Fortune has installed 5 high efficiency cooling towers to supply 3,500 tons of cooling capacity, greatly increasing the central chilling plant efficiency, the company said.
It also deployed contained hot / cold aisles in the data rooms.

The facility will support a minimum energy density of 185 watts per square foot and when fully complete it is slated to consist of over 140,000 square feet in three buildings on a 9.26-acre campus.

The Phase I development was designed, built, commissioned, and will be maintained by companies including DPR Construction, Rosendin Electric, Therma, and <a data-cke-saved-href="http://www.dga-mv.com/" href="http://www.dga-mv.com/" class="external>Dowler Gruman Architects</a>.<br><br>EYP Mission Critical Facilities, recently acquired by Hewlett Packard, led the Level 5 commissioning effort. Fortune's facility engineering and maintenance conform to ISO 9001 standards. <br><br>During independent testing through a Level 5 Commissioning Process, the data center achieved a PUE of 1.37 at full load, an energy-efficiency level far superior to the industry average data center PUE of 2.0, and better than the EPA's 2011 target PUE of 1.45 for state-of-the-art enterprise-class data centers, Fortune said.<br><br>The company estimates that moving IT load from a legacy data center to Fortune's facility would result in reduced annual electrical consumption of 40 million Kilowatt-hours which Fortune estimates will save tenants over $4 million per year in energy costs. In environmental terms removing 40 million Kilowatt-hours from the U.S. grid reduces CO2 emissions by approximately 27,000 tons annually.<br><br>According to <a data-cke-saved-href=" http:="" www.fortunedatacenters.com"="">Fortune Data Centers' CEO John Sheputis, "We are thrilled to bring this facility online. To be able to fund, construct, commission, and lease a project of this size in this economic climate is a true indication of the underlying strength of local data center market. I consider the Phase I facility to be among the largest, most powerful, and most energy-efficient data centers ever to be developed in Silicon Valley."

Power backup is provided by seven new Cummins diesel generators for 14.75 Megawatts of back-up power. The facility is carrier neutral, with diverse paths and multiple points of network entry. AboveNet, Level3, and AT&T are on-site;Verizon and XO are also available in nearby communications vaults.