Eni launches the construction site of the new Green Data Center

Ferrera Erbognone (Pavia), 3 October 2011 – Eni has opened today in Ferrera Erbognone (Pavia), near the power plant Enipower, the construction plant that will lead to the creation of the new Green Data Center, designed to house Eni’s central processing computer systems currently located in various sites around Italy.
The new center - entirely Italian - will be unique in the Country both for type and size and will be allocated for information technology management and development of seismic simulation (High Performance Computing).

The Green Data Center will use the most innovative infrastructure guided by the energy savings which allows a significant reduction in operating costs as well. The energy efficiency of the new center, which will be completed by 2012, will result in a reduction of CO2 emissions equivalent to 335 thousand tons per year (approximately 1% Kyoto’s Italian target for energy).

The Green Data Center offers very high levels of dependability, innovation and sustainability, beginning with the site of its construction. Ferrera Erbognone was chosen because of its immediate proximity to the power plant Enipower, the Eni plant that best meets the data center’s requirements for electrical power: the required power is already available and energy is produced from methane turbogas, the cleanest of fossil fuels to produce electricity.

With this project, Eni aims to overcome the best result in terms of energy efficiency ever achieved by mega-centers in the world, measured by the international standard parameter PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness - the relationship between total consumption of data centers and their own consumption of equipment dedicated to IT processes).
The Eni Green Data Center will reach a level of efficiency equal to an annual average PUE of less than 1.2, compared to the best result in the world which is equal to 1.27 and the average Italian presenting values ​​between 2 and 3.

The Green Data Center’s efficiency is also a product of the particular cooling system employed. To dissipate the heat generated from data processing and to cool computer equipment, data centers typically use without interruption, throughout the year, air conditioners and fans. The Eni Green Data Center, by contrast, will use outdoor air through the technique of direct free-cooling to cool computers for at least 75% of the hours. This will limit the use of air conditioners to 25% of the time. An excellent result, considering that the plant will be located at the 45th Parallel, while the Data Centers with similar characteristics are generally located in the north and in environments that have very different weather characteristics (such as the Rocky Mountains in US, UK and Ireland). The air from the outside, before being introduced into the system, will be filtered for dust, removed to the extent of about 3,000 kilograms per year. Therefore, the air returned outside will be clean.

In order to create the Green Data Center totally innovative solutions were developed. These include, on the electric front, the UPS continuity group in off-line technology commissioned directly by Eni, which, unlike existing ones, are activated only when needed.