Virtualization earns city energy rebate

The city of Walnut Creek, Calif. will earn a rebate through Pacific Gas & Electric’s (NYSE: PCG) non-residential retrofit rebate program after teaming up with virtualization firm INX (NASDAQ: INXI). The company consolidated the city’s 40 servers onto three pieces of hardware, allowing its computers to run virtually from these three servers.

The city’s servers had not been updated since 2000, which allowed it to evaluate operations and put in place what Laura Peabody, Walnut Creek’s CIO, calls a “green IT plan.”  

“It costs less, it performs better and it’s environmentally better for the community in the long run,” Peabody says. “We’re focused on making everything as energy efficient as we can. Virtualization was a natural fit.”  

INX was awarded the $212,000 project because of its experience with municipal virtualization and the business applications the city uses. It also has experience with the PG&E rebate program and assisted Walnut Creek in preparing the application which netted it about $4,500 in rebates thanks to 88,362 kilowatt hours of reduced demand.

Purchasing more than 30 new servers as it had initially planned would have cost the city as much as $320,000. Additionally, the city expects energy savings of $11,500 per year from the server virtualization. This means a total savings of $160,000 dollars, including the savings from the initial project budget, over the lifetime of the hardware.

According to Peabody, many of the city’s upcoming projects are planned with sustainability in mind. A new library is being constructed to U.S. Green Building Council standards and the police department’s servers will also be virtualized in the near future.