Microsoft Azure: Microsoft teams up with Eaton to enhance sustainability

Eaton has announced that it will expand its collaboration with Microsoft as part of a new strategic agreement between the two to address major industry developments, including "digital transformation, sustainability and the energy transition." According to the companies, a key feature of the partnership includes Eaton's proprietary EnergyAware UPS technology in Microsoft projects, which over the years has had digital capabilities added to it,  allowing it to be used as a distributed energy resource (DER) supporting grids with "high levels of variable renewable energy generation."

Explaining how this ties in with sustainability, Craig McDonnell, senior vice president and general manager of the Energy Transition and Digital division at Eaton, said: "A grid-interactive UPS helps decarbonise energy at grid level which means that its sustainability benefit extends beyond the data center. This changes the game in terms of energy management within the data center's overall environmental impact profile."

"A grid-interactive data center is one where its extensive electrical system functions not only to protect customer IT data and applications but also to provide valuable electrical services back to the transmission system operator and the grid. These auxiliary services will be increasingly critical to help grids cope with high levels of variable renewable energy," added Sean James, director of Data Centre Research, Microsoft.