A data center operator in Hong Kong was able to cut its power consumption by up to 30 percent through clever engineering and thus reduce its emissions, a CLP Power Hong Kong study shows.

The energy-saving technique has the potential to be used in the city's other data centers, CLP said, adding that it is also studying ways to save energy in hospitals, malls and factories.

Data centers need to be well air-conditioned to keep their servers cool. As one of the industries with the highest carbon emissions, CLP decided to study how they could use less energy using part of its HK$5-million community energy saving fund.

Several hundred thousand dollars were spent on the project, says CLP Power's director of customer success and sales Anthony Lo Chi-wah.

Equinix, which has five data centers in Hong Kong, was able to reduce its computer room energy consumption by 30 percent by optimizing airflows.

It first designed a system to separate the hot and cold air, then developed a set of procedures to monitor the cold-aisle-containment temperature, which can be tuned by managing the airflow according to the variations of customers' IT load and distribution, said Equinix manager of site operations Hong Kong Leung Wai-lo.

Hong Kong Polytechnic University's Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering research assistant professor Oscar Chan Ka-chung said the study was carried out over 24 days in the first two quarters of the year, which should be representative enough. The technique could save 131,000 kilowatt-hours annually, more or less the same power used by 450 families of three, while 51,000 kg of carbon emissions can be reduced.

Revealing the results are, from left, Oscar Chan, Equinix Hong Kong interim managing director Max Parry and Anthony Lo. Sing Tao

Data center cuts energy use by 30pc