HP's EcoPOD uses free-air and DX (direct-expansion) cooling, without needing any chilled water. "Just add power and networking -- in any environment," says to John Gromala, director of product marketing, Modular Systems, Industry Standard Servers and Software, HP. According to Gromala, "the EcoPOD optimizes efficiency achieving near-perfect Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) between 1.05 to 1.30 (depending on ambient conditions)." And, says Gromala, "because EcoPODs are freestanding, they can be deployed in as quickly as three months. Customers are putting EcoPODs behind their existing facilities, inside warehouses or on roofs."

IT gear runs on DC (direct current), but utilities provide electricity as AC (alternating current).

Normally, "A UPS converts the 3-phase 480vAC coming from the power utility to DC, to charge its batteries, and then reconverts back to 3-phase 480vAC to send it through the data center. The PDU (Power Distribution Unit) for each rack or row of racks converts the 3-phase 480vAC to 3-phase 208vAC, which is what normally goes into IT gear like servers and storage arrays. And the power supplies in the IT gear converts that 208vAC into 380vDC," says Dennis Symanski, Senior Project Manager, , and chairman of the 's committee writing the 380vDC standard.

Various initiative are underway exploring going, ahem, directly from utility power. "We've done a lot of demos worldwide about running data centers at 380vDC (volts of Direct Current) instead of 208vAC," says Symanski.