For them, the news that Iceotope — which makes just such a “free cooling” promise for data centers — has a new lease on life will be good news indeed.

The assets of Iceotope — an English company behind a scalable, modular liquid cooling platform for data centers — have been bought by a consortium that includes the original engineering team for the technology. Fund-raising for the seven-figure investment to acquire the company’s technology and intellectual property (IP) was led by Peter Hopton, the original inventor and newly appointed CTO.

The VC-backed Iceotope entered administration in October 2011. Hopton was not part of the management team when the company entered into administration.

Iceotope says its patented technology can dramatically reduce power consumption in data centers by cooling servers at the source of the heat: the component level. The electronic components are sealed inside giant heat-pipes containing an ultra-convective fluid. All the generated heat can then be captured and efficiently removed without heating up the surrounding data center environment.

According to the company, data centers with Iceotope servers can save 20 percent of power consumption at the server level and save 97 percent of the costs associated with cooling power, for an overall cost reduction of more than 50 percent for the typical data centre.

“With the data center industry growing by 12 percent each year, data center providers are struggling to keep up with demand for higher efficiency and higher density, while keeping power consumption and costs to a minimum,” Hopton said. “Iceotope’s unique technology can help data center providers to save half of all overall electricity costs compared to an average data centre.”

With Iceotope servers, the components are encapsulated in 3M Novec, an inert and environmentally sound coolant. Through a state of ultra-convection, waste heat generated by the servers is used to passively pump the coolant through the system, thus removing the need for fans, chillers and airflow. Waste heat can then transferred to outside of the data center or can even be repurposed to heat other office spaces.

“According to IDC, approximately 40 percent of today’s data center costs are power-related; however, by 2015, this figure will exceed 50 percent,” Hopton said. “In order to attempt to combat these escalating costs, many companies are looking to drastic measures to improve their cooling efficiency, such as moving their data centers to the Arctic Circle. Iceotope technology makes this move obsolete, as this unique liquid cooling technology allows full-time, free cooling everywhere on the globe.”

IBM this week rolled out just such a system at its software development lab in Bangalore, India. The system, which includes a 6,000-square-foot array of rooftop solar panels, should be able to supply a steady 50 kilowatts of power for an average of five hours a day, for up to 330 days per year.

By using high-voltage DC power conditioning methods, which helps to  reduce AC-DC conversion losses, the technology can also cut a data center’s energy consumption by about 10 percent, according to IBM.

In many emerging markets, electrical grids are undependable or non-existent. That often forces companies to rely on expensive diesel generators. As a result, it can be both difficult and costly for organizations in such regions to deploy a lot of computers, especially in the concentrated way in which they’re used in data centers.

IBM says its solar array technology package makes it possible for banks, telecommunications companies or government agencies to consider setting up a data center without having to rely on the grid. The combination of technologies effectively lets users create their own DC mini-grid inside the data center.

In many data centers, high-voltage, DC computer servers and water-cooling systems are already beginning to replace traditional, alternating current (AC)-powered servers and air-conditioning units. According to IBM, its Bangalore array is the first to blend solar power, water cooling and power conditioning into a “snap-together” package that can run massive configurations of electronic equipment.

“The technology behind solar power has been around for many years, but until now, no one has engineered it for efficient use in IT,” said Rod Adkins, senior vice president for IBM Systems & Technology Group. “We’ve designed a solar solution to bring a new source of clean, reliable and efficient power to energy-intensive, industrial-scale electronics.”

The Bangalore solar-power system will be connected directly into the data center’s water-cooling and high-voltage DC systems. The result: a compute power of 25 to 30 teraflops using an IBM Power Systems server on a 50 KW solar power supply. IBM also plans to make the new solar-power technology available to its clients.

The two firms have teamed up to develop a new, DC-powered data center module — the first ever, in fact. They expect to complete the development by the end of this year.

Making data centers as energy efficient as possible remains a challenge as the demand for networking and data storage continues to rise. Data centers typically consume 15 times more energy per square foot than a typical office building and, especially as they need to operate 24/7, can be up to 100 times as energy intensive as other buildings.

Because of this, an increasing number of data centers are adopting DC-powered technology as it reduces power conversion losses and is 10 to 20 percent more energy efficient than standard AC devices. DC-powered systems can also reduce complexity and require less space, which decreases equipment, installation and maintenance costs.

ABB has made it a goal to expand its DC-powered offerings. It recently announced plans to design and install an advanced DC-power distribution system for green.ch, a Swiss information and communications technology service provider. And this past May, ABB gained a controlling interest in Validus DC Systems, which provides DC power infrastructure equipment.

Designed to be portable and easily packaged together, modular data centers can be manufactured and deployed more rapidly than traditional data center buildouts.

“The data center has always been DC powered; every device in the data center uses DC power inside,” said George D. Slessman, CEO of IO. By combining IO’s OS and modular data center platform, he added, “we can now deliver the entire data center from the source on DC power, while providing flexibility to deliver AC power where and when needed.”

The Thor Data Center near the capital city of Reykjavik recently opened its first data storage container and expects a second to be delivered soon. Both use natural cooling technology to keep servers at optimum operating temperatures. The data center reports an extra-low power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.07.

The modular natural free cooling system uses naturally cool outside air to maintain the right conditions inside the data storage containers. Critical parameters in each container are monitored and controlled by ABB’s AC500 programmable logic controllers (PLCs). An active PLC measures temperature, humidity, energy consumption and other factors on an ongoing basis, while a redundant PLC is on standby and ready to begin working within 20 milliseconds if the active PLC fails.

“Sentilla’s technology of maximizing business value from IT organizations addresses a critical need — not just for the telecommunications industry, but also in other enterprises that are looking to leverage IT to drive greater revenue and profitability,” said Yvonne Kwek, CEO of SingTel Innov8 Ventures, which led the new financing round, with participation from Sentilla’s existing backers, ONSET Ventures and Claremont Creek Ventures.

Sentilla is targeting customers whose IT executives are increasingly being asked to support new business initiatives with shrinking budgets. It says its software provides an immediate, granular view of data centers that can enable IT departments to function as profit centers instead of financial burdens.

“We’re leading the charge to turn  IT upside down and deliver more services using less resources,”said Mike Kaul, CEO of Sentilla.

Sentilla’s features include the patent-pending Sentilla Virtual Meters, which computes the power consumption of unmetered data center assets, performs “what-if” analysis to predict future performance, and tracks and predicts application performance and energy used in both virtual and dedicated environments.

“The distributed computing model of the cloud parallels the distributed power-generation model of solar and wind energy,” said Alan Lee, corporate vice president of research and advanced development at AMD. “Directing power to data centers from these emerging renewable energy resources without relying on a large-scale, traditional electrical grid is a key challenge. One ultimate goal is the co-location of dynamic energy sources with dynamic computing resources to improve the economics, performance, and environmental benefits of both infrastructures.”

Because wind and solar-derived energy can be intermittent, this study will also examine critical questions of how to automatically shift a compute load between data centers and maintain reliability.

The study proposal was developed by AMD engineers in conjunction with Clarkson University, and backing from NYSERDA and other private funding sources are now enabling it to enter the research phase. Students will begin with experiments on how to effectively manage data through a distributed network based on renewable energy. The second phase of the project then aims to incorporate hardware elements, including HP’s Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD) based on AMD’s Opteron processor, which was developed for energy efficiency and cloud computing.

Led by Crosslink Capital, the investment round also includes funds from Aeris Capital, Emerald Technology Ventures, GE Energy Financial Services, Nth Power, Robert Bosch Venture Capital and Sequoia Capital.

The funding will help the company move ahead with both product development and global market expansion, according to Peter Van Deventer, CEO of SynapSense.

The company’s wireless data center monitoring and energy management solution combines hardware and software to generate energy savings of up to 20 percent and also reduce carbon emissions, according to SynapSense. The technology has been deployed by customers in numerous markets, including finance, healthcare, defense and utilities.

Even small improvements in the efficiency of power supplies, motors and lighting systems — sources of huge energy demand — through the use of digital control systems could have a major impact on global energy consumption, according to Freescale. It claims the newest member of its DSC portfolio, the MC56F84xx, can help increase system stability for motor control applications. And increased system stability means motors that run more efficiently and quietly (in a dishwasher or other appliance, for example).

Better stability also means less energy waste and heat, which means designers can reduce costs and system size. For example, a server room with power supplies that generate less heat requires less energy for cooling, and circuit board designs that have less heat to dissipate can be smaller (improved power density), reducing system size and cost and allowing “miniaturization” of the application.

“With increased awareness and concern about worldwide energy use, designers are seeking ways to minimize energy consumption,” said Reza Kazerounian, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale’s Microcontroller Solutions Group. “With the MC56F84xx family, we have re-examined and improved every aspect of a DSC — upgrading the core to 32 bits, increasing peripheral flexibility and precision and simplifying design methodologies — to provide our customers a faster, smarter way to manage energy use.”

The MC56F84xx family is targeted at high-end digital power supplies, such as those used for servers in data centers. Improving the energy efficiency of data centers will become increasingly critical as businesses and consumers continue to migrate to cloud computing. As cloud use increases during the next few years, the average size of the data centers hosting the cloud infrastructure also will grow dramatically, in turn increasing energy consumption. With the price of electricity increasing and the typical electricity cost for a server rack equaling nearly 20 percent of its overall cost of ownership, data center owners will continue to look for more energy-efficient solutions to help reduce their total costs.

Cisco’s new Containerised Data Centre comes in a weather-proof ISO container with an open architecture. It’s designed to help meet the unique needs of government and commercial organisations for mobile rapid deployment, disaster recovery, support in remote areas, and better cost utilisation.

The Containerised Data Centre’s energy-efficiency platform can yield a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of less than 1.25, compared to 1.6 to 3.0 for other data centre solutions, according to Cisco.

Cisco developed the solution by working with partners such as VMware, EMC, NetApp and Johnson Controls.

“As we plan the first data centres under the new code of conduct we’re looking a new ways of doing things — this is ‘data centre 2.0,’ a leap forward in the way we use power and the efficiencies we deliver,” said Alex Rabbetts, managing director of Migration Solutions, a computer room and data centre consultancy and services company. “The next generation will be the greenest data centres yet.”

Rabbetts made his comments at this week’s Data Centres Europe conference.

The 2010 best practices policies for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres sets standards for power consumption, energy efficiency, operating temperatures, environmental reporting and more. The document has so far earned the support of 96 businesses and endorsers, including Migration Solutions.

As the demand for internet and IT services has grown, so has the data centre industry’s energy and carbon footprint. In some cases, a data centre’s carbon emissions and energy use can be 50 times greater than that of a comparably sized office space.

“The greener data centre is the key issue for the industry today,” Rabbetts said. “It is vital that we have our own house in order so we are ready to play a significant role in the development of the growing number of environmental ‘smart society’ projects, incorporating smart  grid, smart cities and smart transportation projects, all of which rely on data processing and data centres for their success.”