SprayCoolÔäó, an industry leader in solving complex thermal problems caused by electronics, has announced that its new customer, Mountain Gear, will reduce its energy consumption and support the national effort for data centers to become more "green, by installing SprayCool EnhancedÔäó Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers in its data center.
Mountain Gear, an online retailer of high-end camping and outdoor gear, already takes numerous measures to ensure that its facility is environmentally friendly. When it came time to expand its data center, however, the company wanted to reduce the costly amounts of energy being consumed by its power-hungry, forced-air cooling units. In turn, Mountain Gear selected SprayCool's M-Series - a rack-level solution for cooling servers - to take its "greening efforts one step further.
"SprayCool can easily deliver tangible energy savings to its data center customers - all without sacrificing the servers' performance, said Rob Savette, vice president corporate development at SprayCool. "Plus, thanks to our partnership with the utility company Avista, we can offer an even larger savings for companies who want to reduce their environmental impact. Working with Mountain Gear and Avista is an exciting opportunity for us because not only does it make business sense for everyone involved, it also embodies the national synergy between industry and utilities to make data centers a more environmentally-friendly and green space.
Last year, after evaluating the benefits of SprayCool's products, Avista Utilities - a Spokane-based electric and natural gas utility - announced that it would offer a rebate to commercial and government customers who utilized the pioneering technology. Mountain Gear, the first company to participate in the rebate program, will receive up to a $5,000 rebate for each fully loaded SprayCool M-Series server rack.
SprayCool's system uses a liquid, which is safe for electronics and people, to cool electronics and capture heat at the chip level before it reaches the air in the room. Using SprayCool solutions to cool the servers in a conventional datacenter can reduce total cooling power consumption by 40 percent or more - a power savings that can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, for even a small datacenter. Plus, by reducing the need for forced-air cooling systems, a significant amount of valuable data center space can also be saved.
"As a growing company, we searched for solutions that would not only allow us to add more electronics to our limited space, but also do so in a responsible manner, said Paul Fish, president of Mountain Gear. "SprayCool's products were a perfect fit. By installing the company's liquid-cooling technology, we hope to serve as an example of how e-commerce companies can easily reduce their environmental footprint.
Officials at Avista are also excited to work with Mountain Gear to reduce the company's natural gas consumption by reusing the heat collected from SprayCool's system.
"Waste heat collected from SprayCool's innovative technology may now be transferred to a system or device that needs it, providing even greater energy efficiency, said Bruce Folsom, senior manager of demand side management at Avista Utilities. "We are excited to help Mountain Gear develop ways that heat can be used for other purposes, such as warming other rooms or pre-heating a water heater's supply.
Mountain Gear plans to start installing its SprayCool-enabled Dell servers within the next two months. In addition, it may add SprayCool solutions to its IBM servers, which are already in production.
The company has a strong sustainability ethic in keeping with the nature of the goods it sells and an interest in protecting the environment. It just moved its headquarters to a 160,000-square-foot building in Spokane Valley, and is working on a LEED Certification of the remodel project.