Data centres could save a third of their lighting costs by replacing black server cabinets with grey ones, believes Mark Hirst, T4 product manager, Cannon Technologies. In fact, choosing to use grey or white cabinets during an equipment refresh can make bigger savings than intelligent lighting systems which use movement-sensitive lights.
Ambient light levels in a server room are crucial for the engineers who maintain the systems but ironically it can be the equipment itself which can make a significant impact. The light reflective value (LRV) of black server racks can be as little as 5% whereas grey or white will reflect up to 80% of the light. “Using the LRV of the server cabinet colour, it is not unrealistic to see a saving of around 30% on the lighting in a data centre,” said Hirst.
Cannon Technologies
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