IT shops will get new utility rebates for using energy-saving storage technologies because of an initiative that helps storage vendors and utilities measure and validate energy use reductions.

Wikibon,  a company founded in early 2007 to gather and distribute knowledge about IT in a Wikipedia-like style, designed a service called the Wikibon Energy Labs which lets storage vendors verify the energy savings of certain products, making them eligible for utility rebates. EMC, 3Par, Compellent, DataDirect Networks, Hitachi Data Systems, Nexsan and Xiotech are all getting products certified for energy rebates available through the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, which provides natural gas and electric service in northern and central California.

PG&E already offers numerous rebates but barely any of them are for storage technologies, says Dave Vellante, a former senior vice president at IDC who co-founded Wikibon. While it’s not that hard to quantify energy savings from servers, particularly with virtualization technology, storage vendors were having a tough time showing the benefits of their own efficient technologies. (Compare storage products)

“The IT industry didn’t speak kilowatts that well, and the utility industry wasn’t that well-versed in geek,” Vellante says. “They needed some translation to go that last mile, even though there are very smart people in both industries.”

Software technologies that maximize storage space and thus limit the amount of spinning disk drives enterprises must deploy are numerous, including thin provisioning, intelligent spin down, tiered storage management, flash drives, data deduplication and MAID (massive array of idle disks). 

Lots of IT vendors are claiming to offer “green” products, which can make it difficult to separate hype from substance. Wikibon’s lab service, which charges fees to the storage vendors, was designed to quantify exactly how much spinning disk a storage-saving technology would allow a customer to get rid of, Vellante says.

So far, only MAID and thin provisioning have qualified for rebates, but more technologies should be eligible soon, says Mark Bramfitt, who manages the PG&E customer energy efficiency program.

Individual rebates can vary widely and are hard to estimate, but PG&E has plenty of money to go around.