Sirdhar Pinnapureddy: The 'green man' of Indian data centre industry

Hyderabad: Leaders aren't born or made; they are self-made – Stephan Covey

One such self-made leader is Sridhar Pinnapureddy, the founder and CMD of CtrlS Datacentres, who has transformed the Indian data centre industry. His efforts are beyond simply providing the best of service to his customers. He is also committed to keep the planet healthy and safe for the future generations. Under his leadership, CtrlS has undertaken 200 innovations combined with 25 green initiatives to reduce carbon footprint and dependency on fossil fuels, eliminate waste of water and natural resources, e-waste recycling and management, adoption of technologies to reduce air-pollution, become a paperless office and achieve sustainable outcomes. Because of these and many more reasons, the company has been certified with all major green awards.

Sridhar runs India's largest number of Rated-4 hyperscale green data centres certified by US Green Building Council (USGBC). He has built world's first Leader in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum Certified v4 O+M green data centre and has won CII energy efficiency awards for 10 consecutive years. For this and several other efforts, Sridhar is known as the 'Green Man' of Indian data centre industry. The driving force behind the green data centres, Sridhar has implemented over 80 innovations in sustainability and energy efficiency, built India's first solar panel covered data centre and 100 per cent air pollution free data centre. He has also deployed Asia's largest Gas Insulated Substation (GIS) and 500-acre solar farm to replace fossil fuel dependency.

The need for green efforts

According to various research, data centres globally consume nearly 3 per cent of global electricity, which is 400 terawatt-hours of electricity. Hence, there is a compelling need for data centres to adopt environment-friendly strategies. CtrlS has undertaken several measures to lead the industry. Today, the company operates data centres where computer, electrical, lighting, and mechanical systems which are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimal environmental impact by curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Echoing the CtrlS' commitment, Gopalakrishnan, MD, GBCI – Southeast Asia & Middle East Markets added: "Sustainability is embedded in the DNA of CtrlS, as the company is focused on best practices in energy management, good indoor air quality management, water conservation and efficiency management, waste management, etc. All CtrlS Rated-4 hyper scale data centres are certified as LEED Platinum v4 O M by GBCI, setting a benchmark for the data centre industry both in India and around the world."

The company carries out several energy saving initiatives akin to highly efficient power servers and supplies, low power consuming processors, server virtualization, best cooling practices, chiller plant manager, VFDs for all HVAC equipment, variable cooling system, CTI approved cooling towers besides several other measures. CtrlS is also working on storage optimization strategies such as usage of energy efficient storage devices, de-duplication & compression, load balancing, reducing power density requirements, eliminating redundant data and several others. These have resulted in low PUE of 1.35. Regular Ashrae audits also helps CtrlS to identify areas of energy inefficiency improvement.

Sridhar says, "at CtrlS, we care for planet Earth. It is important that we leave behind a healthy planet for our future generations." As a step towards this, the company is betting big on solar energy. Its hyper scale data centres in Mumbai is the country's largest solar plant in façade with 1.3 MW installed capacity generating 1.8 million units of power per year, which has helped offset CO2 emissions by 620 tons/year. Its Bangalore facility has 30 KW solar plant operational. CtrlS is also building a 500-acre solar plant to generate solar power ranging between 300 to 500 MW. The company aims to run 85 per cent of its power requirements through renewable energy.

CtrlS has built its Noida data centre as India's first 100 per cent air pollution free facility. It has installed an air filtration plant to process the contaminated air, scrub it and then release the clean air into the data centre. This keeps the servers, storage devices, networking components and other devices within the facility in a healthy state. The company also has storm water harvesting at all its facilities that recycles nearly 70-90 per cent of water. Such initiatives have enabled CtrlS to eliminate nearly 2,25,000 metric tons of CO2. It has also recycled nearly 10 billion litres of water, reduced 95 per cent of paper usage saving 10,000 plus trees, and displacement of carbon equivalent to 149,172 cars driven in the last 900 days, 77,225 tonnes of battery waste and 2.35 tonnes of e-waste recycled/disposed in an environmental-friendly manner, and 18.5 Gwh of annual savings through its energy conservation methods.

For Sridhar, this is just the beginning. He aims to use 100 per cent renewable energy (or as per permissible limit by Govt.) across all its facilities, install onsite solar on new buildings and be carbon neutral by 2030, while the company has set up a goal for 50 per cent usage of recycled water by 2024 and has established waste disposal program. Indeed, every step he takes forward is towards ensuring a greener, better and prosperous Earth for us and better business opportunities for customers.