(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Wholesale data center services provider Digital Realty Trust (www.digitalrealtytrust.com) announced on Monday it has been awarded a LEED Platinum certification from the US Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org) for a new data center in Silicon Valley.
Occupied by graphics chip manufacturer NVIDIA (www.nvidia.com), the data center houses support mission-critical systems for its global IT infrastructure.
Last week, Digital Realty Trust announced it paid about $44.3 million for two other data centers in Silicon Valley, including 444 Toyama Drive facility in Sunnyvale and 1525 Comstock Street in Santa Clara.
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System is a third-party certification program and the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of green buildings.
The DRT facility is just one of two data centers in the US that has earned LEED Platinum certification, along with American College Testing facility in Iowa City. Additionally, an Advanced Data Centers facility in Sacramento has been pre-certified for LEED Platinum status.
LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability based on five key areas of human and environmental health, including sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.
Digital Realty says its facility was designed using sustainable design principles, construction techniques and input materials that enabled it to achieve the highest LEED rating. This includes airside economization, or free cooling, which the data center will be able to use more than 65 percent of the year.
The free cooling feature lets the company save about 3.5 million kilowatt hours of energy a year, which equates to more than $250,000. The facility also achieved a peak power usage effectiveness rating of 1.31 during the commissioning process.
During the construction of the data center, Digital Realty worked with local utilities to receive LEED rebates and incentives for the site.
“Achieving LEED platinum certification means that attention has been paid to every aspect of the building’s design and construction, including the operating energy efficiency of the finished data center as well as often overlooked, key issues such as building materials, materials re-use and construction practices,” says Jim Smith, CTO of Digital Realty Trust. “Through a LEED program in conjunction with a PUE-optimized datacenter, we have been able to repeatedly meet sustainable and effective corporate green strategies.”
Digital Realty also earned LEED-CI Gold certification for its 1500 Space Park property in Santa Clara in June, and has many other projects in process for LEED certification.
