Anatomy of a Data Center: Green Means LEED Gold in Piscataway for DFT's NJ1 Data Center

With New Jersey a favorite destination for financial services data centers, Dupont Fabros Technologies (DFT) built its NJ1 facility in Piscataway. The LEED-certified, 360,000-square-foot, 36.4 megawatt facility not only is energy efficient, it is geographically located along key communication routes, particularly Spread Networks' dark fiber run to Chicago, which measures in at 13.33 milliseconds round-trip. Among NJ1's financial industry tenants, NYSE Technologies has set up a Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure (SFTI) Access Center in the facility that provides entry to the NYSE Euronext community for more than 1,300 market participants, ranging from buy-side traders to broker-dealers and market operators.

While Piscataway may seem distant from the traditional financial markets in New York, Barclays Capital also runs a data center in the municipality (purchased from Lehman Brothers in 2008). DFT's NJ1 facility, opened in fall 2010, has six tenants and is at 34 percent occupancy. While the data center operator declines to name its clients, in addition to NYSE Technologies, DFT says the facility houses three other financial services firms --- two investment banks and one financial information provider.

Almost every part of NJ1 aims to increase efficiency to lower cost to tenants. Perhaps the most impressive example of energy efficiency is the utilization of the facility's seven-acre roof as a giant solar power generator. DFT has installed more than 6,000 solar panels that can generate 2.167 megawatts at peak power.

Wall Street &Technology was given an exclusive tour of the NJ1 data center. Following are a few select images of the facility. Many of the images show how the design of the data center reduces energy consumption and increases efficiency.