Seattle, WA (July 26, 2021) – Sabey Data Centers, one of the largest privately-owned data center owners, operators and developers in the United States, announced today that five of its buildings in Washington State and northern Virginia earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2021 ENERGY STAR certification, with top scores. Two of the Sabey data center buildings were awarded a score of 99 points, and a third facility earned 100 points — the highest possible score on ENERGY STAR’s 1 – 100 scale.
Rob Rockwood, President of Sabey Data Centers, said, “This latest certification confirms Sabey’s core commitment and leadership role in energy-efficient data center design, construction and operation. The more energy efficient our data centers become, the less electricity is consumed by our customers. The less electricity they use, the lower their costs.”
ENERGY STAR certification signifies that an industrial facility performs in the top 25 percent of similar facilities nationwide for energy efficiency and meets strict energy efficiency performance levels set by the EPA. An ENERGY STAR efficiency performance rating of 99 is just one point short of the highest level of energy efficiency.
Sabey’s Columbia Building D in East Wenatchee, WA, achieved a 100-point certification for 2021, its first year to seek certification. According to Jean Lupinacci, Chief of the ENERGY STAR Commercial & Industrial Branch, a 100-point score for a building means, literally, it is more energy efficient than 100 percent of similar buildings.
At Sabey’s Quincy campus in central Washington, Building A and Building C each received ENERGY STAR scores of 99, closely matching their 2020 scores of 99 and 100 respectively.
SDC Ashburn Building C in Loudon County, Virginia, received a 2021 score of 97, up from 95 last year; and Sabey’s Building 4 at SDC Seattle received a score of 87 – a remarkably high score for a “pioneer” colocation data center, constructed before the latest 21st century energy efficient advances were incorporated into Sabey’s campuses in central Washington and northern Virginia.
John Sasser, Chief Technology Officer for Sabey Data Centers, said, “Every data center Sabey opens considers efficiency as a key criterion. For example, hot aisle containment provides consistent temperature, saves fan energy, and allows higher air handler discharge temperatures, which provides significant savings through extended economizer hours.
“In addition, we constantly assess and make sure we are hitting our goals. We study why we may have come up a little short, and we leverage areas of success,” he added.
Mr. Rockwood added, “We are focused on increasing the energy efficiency of our data centers, which is frequently judged by power usage effectiveness (PUE), measuring the ratio of total data center power usage vs. the power used exclusively for the computing operations that take place. There are many great claims made on PUE within the industry, however obtaining real energy efficiency in a data center can be challenging based on location. The environments of our data centers in rural Quincy and East Wenatchee vary greatly from our data center in Virginia. We work diligently to make these data centers as efficient as possible, and this is reflected in our ENERGY STAR scores.”
ABOUT SABEY DATA CENTERS
With a portfolio of more than four million square feet of mission critical space, Sabey Data Centers is one of the largest privately owned multi-tenant data center owner/developer/ operators in the United States. Sabey specializes in scalable, custom-built solutions including data center ready shell space and fully turnkey data centers managed by Sabey’s award-winning critical environment staff. Consistently recognized for low-cost hydroelectric power, operational excellence through its world-class data centers and sustained uptime, Sabey is proud to provide data center services to many of the world’s top financial, technology and healthcare companies.
