As part of the company's ecomagination business strategy, General Electric is installing technologies that will reduce its energy use by over 11 percent and water use by 20 percent in one data center in Ohio.

The move is part of the company's overall strategy to cut down its carbon and water footprint; the water savings alone are expected to exceed two million gallons per year, and will also cut the amount of water treatment chemicals by 50 percent.

The technologies going into this data center come from nine of GE's businesses, and include innovations in power quality, water chillers, electricity management, data security and general IT service equipment.

“GE technology can address more than 50 percent of data center energy usage from power supply, distribution, cooling and lighting, and its solutions can result in a 40 percent annual improvement in energy savings for non-IT systems,” said Greg Simpson, Chief Technology Officer, GE. “By combining cutting-edge products and technologies with an expertise in Building Management Systems, GE provides customers the solid foundation for any high technology infrastructure.”

The company is include automation technologies to give IT managers fast, dashboard-based access to all the operations in the data center. The dashboard will also allow workers to look closely at how individual elements of the facility are functioning

GE expects the first half of the data center work to be completed this month, with remaining work getting underway during the first half of 2009.