Microsoft is expected to release details on a new technology that integrates the data center with the power plant. The Data Plant will deliver data to customers instead of electricity, Christian Belady and Vijay Gill, of Microsot’s Global Foundation Services (GFS), wrote in a blog post.

The GFS team believes it can achieve massive efficiency gains by integrating power plants and data centers. The gains are in eliminating transmission lines, substations and transformers, all of which result in electrical losses.

Belady introduced the idea of Data Plants in July 2011. Instead of distributing electricity, these plants distribute data, which becomes another form of energy.

“With these data plants we distribute data (an energy form) in a network (an optical grid) providing the next generation of energy distribution,” Belady and Gill wrote in this week’s post. “Looking at it this way, we are essentially taking another step in the evolution of refining the energy being distributed.”

Microsoft has invested millions of dollars into research in this area, and has filed for a patent for a Data Plant. Belady and Gill said they planned to release more details on the technology later this week.

Efficiency gains can be realized to their full potential only at the scale of the Cloud, the two technologists wrote. “When we talk about the disappearing data center, what we really mean is that it will disappear as we know it through integration and drive unprecedented levels of efficiency gain.”

In an interview, Gill said the team was developing an untraditional approach to building out infrastructure. Data centers and IT components inside have historically been designed and built by separate teams.

GFS is working on ways to “build systems,” Gill said. “Not individual vertical components.”

On Monday afternoon, Microsoft launched a new website for GFS, which provides more details of its data center strategy and data center best practices whitepapers. The site is built on the company’s Windows Azure cloud infrastructure, a company spokesperson said.