ColdWatt Pushes Power Savings

Energy conversion startup ColdWatt unveiled its first products today, which it claims will ease IT's power problems. (See ColdWatt Reduces Consumption.)

The vendor took the wraps off two digitally controlled AC/DC power conversion appliances, which it is touting as a way for firms to control their spiraling energy costs. Electricity prices have shot up over recent years and data centers are increasingly packed with high-density, power-hungry storage kit. (See Power Problems Plague Users and 365 Main.)

Such is the financial impact of this that Google reportedly located its main data center on the banks of the Columbia River in Oregon to tap into abundant (and presumably cheaper) hydro-electric power. (See Google, Google Groans Under Data Strain, and Tracking Google's IT Booty.)

Cue ColdWatt. The Austin, Texas-based firm today launched its power conversion offerings as part of an effort to cut server and storage energy costs. These include a 650W and a 1200W product which use digital technology to control the flow of power to a data center device. The devices, which fit onto the motherboard of a 1U-high server are priced, respectively, at $143 and $265.

ColdWatt's director of marketing, Lakshmi Mandyam, told Byte & Switch that other products for converting power from AC to DC typically rely on analog technology. The exec explains that ColdWatt, which competes with the likes of Emerson Network Power and Delta Electronics, instead uses digital technology to control power conversion.