BBI Computer Centre receives environmental prize

The computer centre at the new Airport Berlin Brandenburg International BBI has received the Best Practice Award 2010 from the Initiative Green IT-BB. The jury, which comprised scientists and business experts, was won over by the computer centre’s eco-friendly climate concept. The key feature of the new centre: the climate control system uses the outside air to cool the systems inside, thus helping to save valuable electricity. Once the outside temperature drops to five degrees Celsius or below no additional power is needed to cool the high-performance servers. Power strips continuously monitor the power consumption of each computer, thus enabling intelligent energy management.

On average, computer centres require just as much energy for cooling and for uninterrupted power supply (UPS) as is needed to run the servers. At the new BBI computer centre the additional power requirements for cooling and USP have been reduced by up to 50 per cent through the use of energy-efficient technology.

All the airport’s essential services run through the BBI servers, from the control centre to the airport information boards, making it all the more important to ensure a dependable power supply. In the event of a power cut, the uninterrupted power supply immediately takes over and with 96 per cent efficiency, it fulfils all Green IT standards. The Best Practice Award is an initiative of the GreenIT-BB network and the Innovation Centre Energy (IZE) at the Technical University of Berlin. The award is presented in recognition of pioneering ideas in Green IT in three categories: “Energy-efficient IT Systems”, “Enterprise” and “Visions”.