GELI, on the other hand, is building the operating software specifically for running energy storage equipment, and the operating system will enable batteries to perform many more tasks, Wartena said.

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The need to engineer energy storage equipment that could work well with solar or wind power plants has prompted many private and public investments in battery and other storage technologies.

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The HDD companies, Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba are participating in better management of storage device energy use, as are flash manufacturers such as SanDisk, Samsung and Toshiba and many flash based storage equipment suppliers such as Skyera, Smart Storage Systems and Virident.

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As shown in a recent Samsung event, increasing utilization of enterprise equipment, including digital storage, keeps the equipment in data centers working even harder, resulting in even higher energy use.

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