BendBroadband Vault Wins Sustainability Award

The Vault's Leonard Weitman (L) accepts the Innovation Award from Mike Riley of The Environmental Center (R).

Last Thursday evening, The Environmental Center of Bend, Oregon, presented the BendBroadband Vault with an Innovation Award as part of the 2011 Sustainability Awards. The event was held to celebrate and recognize Central Oregon-area businesses and individuals for their work toward persistent change and effort in achieving a sustainable future in business, government, nonprofit organizations and the community.

BendBroadband was one of two recipients of the Innovation award, which was given based on “a demonstration and/or a particularly creative approach to a sustainability challenge through a product, service or facility,” according to the Environmental Center of Bend’s website.

Leonard Weitman, the Vice President of Technical Operations at the Vault, was on hand to accept the award. “We built a secure, reliable and scalable data center as a business growth opportunity and took that opportunity to provide a green example for others to follow who may be designing and building similar facilities,” he said.

The BendBroadband Vault’s work in creating a highly energy efficient data center helped with the committee’s decision to select the Vault. According to the Environmental Center’s web site, “the Vault is a national model for the direction these facilities [data centers] must go – highly efficient with aggressive use of renewable energy.”

In particular, the committee highlighted two key areas that separate the Vault from most data centers: 1) the KyotoCooling system, a heat exchange unit that uses the outside air as the source of cooling, and 2) the 624 solar panels that, along with the 75 kW PV powered solar inverters, create more than 152 kW of power. Additionally, the Vault was recognized for its carbon neutrality, Tier III certification, participation in the Blue Sky renewable energy program and for its achievement in becoming a LEED Gold certified, green data center.

The Sustainability Awards took place in downtown Bend at the Oxford Hotel and are part of the Bend 2030 action plan Quality Environment focus area.