[joelmckellar]

I'm working on a data center project that is seeking LEED certification. One of the things we're trying to do is earn an innovation credit in LEED for performing comprehensive CFD analysis on the server room, and the review team has requested quantifiable data about the environmental benefits of CFD modeling.

We have a few arguments for this, and if anyone could send reports, studies, or actual examples of quantifiable benefits along the following lines, that would be a huge help. Basically we're going to have to develop a hypothetical, non-cfd based design, and then using data from these studies as a basis for claiming our actual cfd-based design yielded environmental benefits

• More even temperatures across equipment lead to increased equipment life, resulting in lower material use overall (e.g. equipment will last x% longer on average, resulting in less material waste)
• Efficient placement of cooling systems leads to increased ability to consolidate servers, reducing overall size of the facility (e.g. a typical cfd analysis reduces the need for x racks per 100 existing)
• more evenly distributed cooling supply reduces the need for other cooling systems to oversupply, resulting in an average x% reduction in cooling load

ANY help or additional environmental benefit concepts would be greatly appreciated.