Source: BCS
Social networking site Facebook is attempting to increase the energy efficiency of its servers.
Engineers from the website revealed plans earlier this week to remove uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) and power distribution units (PDUs) from its data centres to lower its overall energy wastage.
Facebook is instead planning on using a power distribution method invented by Google.
This method involves replacing the UPSs and PDUs with a single 12-volt battery for each server's power supply.
James Cole, director of data centre designers Keysource, said that this move was becoming increasingly popular as 'the UPS normally contributes to around five to ten per cent of the energy wastage of a data centre'.
He added: 'Technology is helping to drive the efficiency of the things which cool the data centre, which is where the greatest amount of wastage occurs. So cooling technologies which utilise ambient temperatures outside the data centre, technologies which draw fresh air into the data centre, are all sort of at the nub of the technology.'
The move was unveiled by Facebook engineer Amir Michael at a lecture in California earlier this month.
Mr Michael was previously employed at the Google data centre which developed the technology.