Future Resource Engineering
Maintaining Energy Efficient Data Centers

The data center industry is going through an enormous transformation. New centers are emerging with the best available hardware that minimizes wasteful utilization of resources. To ensure improved return on investments (ROI), organizations should implement energy efficient infrastructures and execute regular maintenance of equipment. C-level management requires continuous and proven cost reduction results for all effective planning. However, enterprises often lack time and expertise to adopt newer technologies, maximize the capabilities of technologies already in place, and provide valuable insights on energy management processes that data centers need. Fort Collins, CO headquartered Future Resource Engineering (FRE), an energy efficiency optimization organization, helps data centers efficiently utilize energy and maintain an optimized infrastructure for improved ROI. The firm offers third-party evaluation and project planning and implementation for customers considering changes in data center infrastructure.

FRE provides expertise for data centers to better manage cooling system energy and reduce operational costs. Through facility evaluations, the firm helps customers identify opportunities that significantly lower energy usage and increase operational efficiency. As a part of the initial evaluation, the company’s experienced team conducts a facility walkthrough at no charge. Extensive audits for operations, layout, cooling units, and airflow management are also conducted. Savings economics are calculated for all recommended changes to obtain a reliable ROI.

The company’s monitoring and control solutions encompass enhanced environmental and power monitoring, helping clients automate data center systems based on environmental and power conditions. Additionally, the solution identifies excessive cooling in data centers—which reduces cooling energy while maintaining temperature stability and performance, and consuming less energy.

With regard to efficiency in equipment upgrades, the company also helps customers identify new high efficiency equipment and calculates the expected efficiency gains over existing and/or end of life equipment. “If a customer is interested in replacing an end-of-life cooling unit with a high efficiency cooling unit, we can calculate how much less energy the new hardware will consume compared to existing ones, and turnkey the entire project,” says Tim Hirschenhofer, General Manager, FRE.This provides the client insight into how new additions will impact power and network requirements before actually implementing them.

Through facility evaluation, the firm helps its clients identify and implement opportunities to significantly lower energy usage and increase operational efficiency

Since its inception, the company has worked with clients across numerous industries to implement energy efficiency optimization with minimal financial risks. Recently, a Minneapolis-based customer engaged FRE to help optimize efficiency across their legacy site portfolio. FRE identified a number of measures they could implement to accomplish an immediate savings and help save energy in the future, including: cooling and airflow improvements, equipment replacements, and enhanced monitoring and controls. Improvements included the installation of new high efficiency CRAC units, moving an existing glycol loop to improve airflow and floor pressure, containment, and environmental monitoring with better cooling controls. FRE also conducted engineering studies to prove anticipated savings, and qualified most of the work for local utility incentives.

FRE has successfully leveraged its expertise in the data center energy efficiency management space. In 2015, FRE helped 40 clients identify more than 24 million kWh in energy savings, equating to $2.2 million in costs savings. Additionally, more than $1.4 million in available utility incentives were identified to help offset the cost of retrofitting, resulting in faster project paybacks. FRE continues to help customers identify and replace older inefficient infrastructure equipment with new higher efficient equipment to improve cooling and airflow management and the overall operational efficiency of its clients’ data centers.