The study, conducted by power measurement specialist IMH Technologies and independently verified by The University of Southampton's Research Institute for Industry (RIFI), sgiw that if left untreated, contamination will accumulate on electronic circuit boards and act as a thermal insulating layer.

This layer of particulate matter will cause temperatures in  electronics to rise, triggering cooling fans to work harder to keep the equipment below its operating temperature limit and in so doing consuming up to 2% more energy in the process.

Cooling efficiency will also be lost if heat sinks, intake and outlet vents or the fans themselves become clogged with contamination, further contributing to power consumption.

Kaushal Doshi, (right) group director at 8 Solutions, discussed the implications of the results: "This is a major step forward for the data centre industry and we are delighted that research findings reflect what we hear from our clients every day.

The warranty & system uptime benefits of contamination management have been well established for some time, but this study provides empirical evidence that regular professional cleaning will have a significant impact on an organisation's carbon footprint and energy bills."

The research was carried out on a live, loaded server, housed in a large data centre in London's Docklands, within a rack which had not been cleaned for 12 months – ensuring the test environment replicated average contamination levels.

The 'as found' power consumption was then measured for one week, before a complete deep clean was undertaken by 8 Solutions specialist technicians. The server's power consumption and performance was again recorded for another week, post clean, before results were carefully analysed.

Simon Cox, Professor of Computational Methods at Southampton noted: "The findings showed that the load in the second test week was almost 10% higher than the first. Yet the power consumption was very slightly lower.

"Understanding that the server's load and power draw are not proportionally linked, we were able to calculate that had the load remained constant, power consumption would have fallen by close to 2%."

For a data centre housing just 800 racks, averaging 1500kW per rack, the power saving would equate to 201,000 kWh/year, which based on an energy cost of 10p/kWh, would save £20,100, as well as also saving 86,430 kg of CO₂."

Doshi concludes: "Today's difficult financial climate, combined with a rising demand for data storage, means the need to minimise the energy requirement for data centres has never been greater. The fact contamination management can help counteract the impact this upward trend is having is great news for us and the whole DC industry.

With research like this available, we believe that regular contamination management will soon be considered an industry standard – accepted by all data centre operators, not just those that have already recognised the financial and environmental benefits."