Sridhar Pinnapureddy: The green man of Indian datacenter industry
Hyderabad: For CtrlS Datacenters’ founder Sridhar Pinnapureddy, green and sustainability measures are a way to keep the planet healthy and safe for the future generations.
Under his leadership, 200 innovations combined with 25 green initiatives have been taken up by the Hyderabad-based company to reduce carbon footprint & dependency on fossil fuels, eliminate wastage of water, become a paperless office, and achieve tangible sustainable outcomes.
He is the driving force to build the world’s first LEED Platinum certified green datacenter, implement over 80 innovations in sustainability and energy efficiency, build India’s first solar panel covered datacenter, build India’s only 100 per cent air pollution free datacenter, deploy Asia’s largest Gas Insulated Substation (GIS) and a 500-acre solar farm to replace fossil fuel dependency.
Research shows datacenters worldwide consume over 400 terawatt-hours of electricity, which is about three per cent of all electricity consumed on earth. Hence, there is a compelling need for datacenters to adopt environmental-friendly strategies. In line with this belief, CtrlS today operates datacenters where computer, electrical, lighting, and mechanical systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimal environmental impact by curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
The company has embarked on several energy saving initiatives such as highly efficient power servers and supplies, low power consuming processors, server virtualisation, best cooling practices, chiller plant manager, variable cooling system, Cooling Technology Institute approved cooling towers besides other measures.
The company has been working on storage optimisation strategies such as usage of energy efficient storage devices, data de-duplication & compression, load balancing, dynamic provisioning, reducing power density requirements, eliminating redundant data etc. Such innovations have led to low power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.35.
The company also goes through ASHRAE audits regularly to identify areas of energy efficiency improvement.
Sridhar Pinnapureddy, founder and CEO, CtrlS Datacenters told Telangana Today, “At CtrlS, we care for planet earth. It is important that we leave behind a healthy planet for our future generations.”
“As a responsible organisation, we have embarked on 200 innovations combined with 25 green initiatives to reduce carbon footprint, reduce dependency on fossil fuels, eliminate wastage of water, become a paperless office, achieve near 100 per cent work from home powered by automation, eliminate usage of plastic and air pollution, recycle e-waste, save trees, and maximise usage of renewable energy,” he added.
Solar adoption
CtrlS is adopting solar energy in a big way. It has built its hyperscale datacenter in Mumbai – the country’s largest solar plant in façade with 1.3 MW installed capacity generating 1.8 million units of power per year. It helps in offsetting CO2 emissions by 620 tonnes per year.
The company is in the process of building a 500-acre solar plant generating solar power ranging between 300 and 500 MW and plans to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and run 85 per cent of its power requirements through renewable energy.
The company’s Bangalore datacenter has 30 KW solar plant and is playing a key role in reducing carbon footprint through renewable energy.
Besides solar focus, CtrlS has established an air filtration plant at Noida, which processes the contaminated air, scrubs it, and then releases clean air into the datacenter, thereby ensuring all the servers, storage devices, networking components and other devices located within the facility are protected.
Siddharth Jain, MD, EPI India said, “CtrlS is among the best datacenters in the country. It follows Rated-4 standards defined by ANSI/TIA-942 and complies with all its guidelines. Its Noida datacenter is built to withstand earthquakes and contain air-pollution through its air filtration plant, which safeguards IT infrastructure from corrosion and is safe for human lungs.”
Green certifications
All CtrlS datacenter buildings are constructed from blocks made from fly ash. It has been deploying eco-friendly organic chemicals with sophisticated online monitoring across its datacenter facilities in addition to an auto dosing system for cooling tower water treatment.
Echoing the CtrlS’ commitment, Gopalakrishnan, MD, GBCI – Southeast Asia & Middle East Markets added, “Sustainability is embedded in the DNA of CtrlS, as the company is focused on best practices in energy management, good indoor air quality management, water conservation and efficiency management, waste management, etc. All CtrlS Rated-4 hyperscale datacenters are certified as LEED Platinum v4 O M by GBCI, setting a benchmark for the datacenter industry both in India and around the world.”
Among other measures, CtrlS has implemented stormwater harvesting (70-90 per cent) at all its datacenters, recycling of water and setting up of Sewage Treatment Plant/Water Treatment Plant for recycling.
Impact through sustainability
Initiatives taken up by CtrlS have led to the elimination of about 2,25,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. Over 10 billion litres of water have been recycled, paper usage reduced by 95 per cent saving 10,000 plus trees, 2.35 tonnes of e-waste recycled/disposed in an environmental-friendly manner, and 18.5 Gwh of annual savings achieved through energy conservation.
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