The server farms which manage and route Internet traffic are among the most energy intensive venues on the planet. According to UC Berkeley researchers Justin Ma and Barath Raghavan, this use accounts for fully one percent of the 16 terawatts of energy used by humanity. That’s why researchers at Rutgers School of Engineering recently installed 16 polycrystalline solar panels on the roof of its computing center. The array, called Parasol – and comprised of up to 160 servers housed inside a stainless-steel-framed metal building the size of an SUV to protect the batteries, transformers and other electrical equipment – will be used to assess how to handle data and computer processing using solar-generated electricity.

Introduced at April’s EuroSys 2012 in Bern, Switzerland, Parasol’s facility was largely completed in May under the direction of Rutgers Computer Science Professors Ricardo Bianchini and Thu D. Nguyen, with the assistance of post doctoral students and graduates.

Source: Earth Techling