The Innovative Green Features of Vantage’s VA1 Campus

In late October, Data Center Frontier kicked off a new content series called, “Greener Data,” which is intended to explore the progress that data center providers are making towards increasing sustainability and making their data centers more environmentally friendly. The first article in the series was focused on Vantage Data Centers and took a detailed look at the first facility on the VA1 campus in Northern Virginia.

Sustainable Data Center Design

What Data Center Frontier found was a data center that was designed from the bottom-up to be both welcoming to customers and sustainable for the environment. The desire to make the data center as sustainable and efficient as possible has resulted in a number of features and energy-saving solutions that Vantage believes can truly be a differentiator in a crowded data center marketplace.

As Lee Kestler, chief commercial officer at Vantage Data Centers, recently told Data Centers Today, “In the biggest data center market in the world, Northern Virginia, Vantage was the first provider to invest heavily in on-site renewable energy generation infrastructure. Our solar/wind lights, solar EV charging stations and large solar tree are direct evidence of our commitment to do more whenever we are able.”

According to the Data Center Frontier article, just one of these innovative, energy-saving features – the multi-tier “solar tree” array of photovoltaic panels will, “…provide 4,788 kilowatt hours of clean power annually for the building’s office areas…[and] save 3.30 metric tons per year of CO2 emissions from entering the environment.” The article also notes that just, “One solar tree can power an electric vehicle for nearly 16,000 miles per year, or charge approximately 500,000 smart phones per year.”

Here is a gallery of some of the exciting and innovative green solutions that have been incorporated into Vantage’s VA1 campus in Northern Virginia:

While all of these green features are visible and tangible to both customers and visitors to the data center, there are other green initiatives in play at Vantage that may not be so easy to see.

“Where appropriate, we’re working with our energy providers to understand where we can make contributions to renewables to help power their grids. These providers must maintain a certain flow of energy, and it becomes very complex to maintain that harmonic flow when they utilize a mix of different generation sources. That is a big task and better left to the professionals operating the grid. But, if we can contribute to [the adoption of renewables] and work alongside our utility partners to forecast steady base load consumption, we want to do that. That’s why we offer carbon offset options to our customers as a part of their investment. We don’t make any profit on that – it’s just Vantage leaning in to participate in a program that enables customers to pay a little bit extra per kilowatt to the utility to subsidize renewables.”

– Lee Kestler, Chief Commercial Officer, Vantage Data Centers

To learn more about Vantage Data Centers’ VA1 campus in Ashburn, VA, click HERE.