EasyStreet leads the way with green data center

Beaverton company’s innovative cooling system will save enough energy to power 52 homes

By Angela Webber

The Beaverton Valley Times, Jul 8, 2010

Jaime Valdez / The Beaverton Valley Times

EasyStreet President and CEO Rich Bader tours his company’s data center. The center’s green retrofit cost $130,000.

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Data centers. Server farms. Information factories.

Whatever you call them, they’re supporting information technology services for corporations across the country.

EasyStreet President and CEO Rich Bader says they “increasingly drive our lives and our economy.” And they use lots of electricity doing it – the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that data centers will make up 3 percent of the country’s total energy consumption by 2011.

EasyStreet, a Beaverton-based company with a long-standing green commitment, recently seized an opportunity to be a leader in energy efficiency in data centers.

The company is in the process of building a new data center, and has recently finished an energy-saving retrofit to its current center, all with funding help from Energy Trust, Oregon Department of Energy’s small energy loan program, and business energy tax credits. The company estimates that it will be able to save 524,000 killowatts a year – enough energy to power 52 average households.

There are dozens of mid-size data centers in the area. There are also huge ones, like the Google and Facebook centers that make headlines for their electricity consumption.

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