Pacific Gas & Electric gives rebates for consolidating data centers

Pacific Gas & Electric in California announced the first-ever utility financial incentive program to support "virtualization projects" in data centers.

Qualifying PG&E customers can earn a rebate of up to $4 million per project site, based on the amount of energy savings achieved. In addition to the rebate, PG&E customers can expect to save $300 to $600 in annual energy costs for each server removed. Those savings nearly double when reduced data center cooling costs are taken into account. (PG&E may also be the first utility to set up a dedicated Web page focusing on the needs of high-tech companies.)

In November 2006, Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced the first-ever utility financial incentive program to support virtualization projects in data centers, with industry support from VMware, Intel Corporation and other high tech leaders.

Virtualization allows multiple applications to run concurrently on computing equipment, thereby enabling customers to consolidate their data centers and remove a large portion of their existing servers.

"Virtualization technology is helping our customers realize significant energy and cost savings, while addressing critical data center capacity issues," explained Helen Burt, senior vice president and chief customer officer for PG&E. "By providing financial support, we hope to increase industry adoption of this technology."

The incentives are based on the amount of energy savings achieved through data center consolidation. Qualifying customers can earn a maximum rebate amount of $4 million per project site.

In addition to the rebate, customers can expect to save $300 to $600 in annual energy costs for each server that is removed. Those savings can almost double when reduced data center cooling costs are also taken into account.

IT Facility Programs:
http://www.pge.com/biz/rebates/hightech/it_facility.html

Energy Efficiency for High Tech Facilities
http://www.pge.com/hightech