I am responsible for some aspects of power and datacenter design where I work. What they're doing is really admirable (and hard), but they're going to do a lot

I am responsible for some aspects of power and datacenter design where I work. What they're doing is really admirable (and hard), but they're going to do a lot more than many other, particularly smaller, datacenters simply because of their scale. From http://www.google.com/corporate/green/datacenters/measuring.html http://www.google.com/corporate/green/datacenters/measuring.... : Figure 1 (chart showing aggregate 1.19 PUE, some as low as 1.1) summarizes the PUE results from all Google-designed data centers with an IT load of at least 5MW and time-in-operation of at least 6 months. 5MW is quite a bit of power. At a PUE of 2.0 that's 25000 amps (@100v), or about 8000-12000 idle servers. In Seattle, the breakover for the largest tier of power is 3MW, making 5MW about $194,000/mo (tariff 40) -> $0.053192 * (24365.25/12) 5000 = $194,283. Obviously at these power levels being green is truly a matter of saving hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. It's a considerably tougher sell to justify high-efficiency construction in a small 100-200KW center, especially when colocating where cooling prices are obscured in the contracts under $/sq/ft instead of $/watt.