Will the "G" in GE Stand For Green?

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This morning, General Electric (GE) announced that it's investing in , a startup working to develop hardware and software that monitors data center power usage in order to help companies determine where they can cut data center costs. Other investors in the company include American River Ventures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, DFJ Frontier, Emerald Technology Ventures, and Nth Power. Existing customers of the SynapSense technology include Facebook, NBC, and Yahoo.


Along with the investment, it's agreed to create a commercial partnership with SynapSense in order to offer customers of its monitoring software and hardware for IT systems a package that includes the SynapSense technology. The wireless monitoring system checks temperature, thermal, and humidity levels in order to allow data centers to determine where they can cut energy use. SynapSense says its AdaptiveControl application can reduce energy costs by up to 35 percent.

This is not the first sign that GE is moving in a green direction. Earlier this month it announced plans for a $200 million fund whose first projects will be smart grid start-ups, a new charger for electric cars, and home energy management technology, while last week it revealed that it will partner with European air agencies to work on reducing the fuel consumption of aircraft. The company has announced that its new focus is “digital energy services, the Smart Grid and ecomagination.” The Ecoimagnation line, created in 2005, sells producsts such as wind turbines, smart appliances and Jenbacher engines.

Data centers consume 1.5 to 2 percent of America's power, but their power usage is increasing. SynapSense CEO Peter Van Deventer commented, "Most data center operators are starting to optimize their existing footprint instead of building new data centers. We’re working with major accounts to drive energy savings in their facilities. Most of them are running out of power.”

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Dani AI

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raised a timely point about larger vendors moving into data-center energy tools. The gap between vendor claims and repeatable savings is almost always measurement and process. The following is a concise, practical checklist and pilot plan that operations teams can use to evaluate monitoring offerings and turn sensor data into verifiable results.

  • Define success metrics and baselines: use the facility main-meter as the ground truth, track PUE (or DCiE), rack-level power normalized to workload, and record environmental baselines long enough to capture daily and weekly cycles.
  • Require raw time-series exports and open APIs: timestamps must be NTP-synced and data should be exportable (CSV/JSON) so independent analysis is possible.
  • Verify sensor accuracy and calibration: request spec sheets and calibration certificates, then cross-check with a reference meter on-site.
  • Assess deployment constraints: map radio or wired coverage, plan gateway redundancy, confirm battery/maintenance procedures, and verify environmental ratings for sensor locations.
  • Evaluate security and lifecycle management: look for encryption, authenticated firmware updates, role-based access, and clear data retention policies.
  • Specify a pilot scope and ROI method: select representative racks/pods, capture a baseline, apply single controlled changes, and compare against mains metering as ground truth.

Pilot execution notes: instrument inlet/outlet air points plus the main meter, keep a change log, avoid making multiple simultaneous adjustments, collect minute-level samples for power and thermal where feasible, and always export raw data for independent verification. Early, repeatable gains are most often from airflow management and setpoint tuning rather than wholesale hardware swaps.

Common pitfalls include trusting only vendor dashboards, ignoring maintenance overhead (batteries/firmware), and failing to correlate energy changes with workload shifts. Insisting on a repeatable, auditable measurement protocol separates marketing claims from durable operational savings.

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