Green IT group The Green Grid has launched a free Cooling Tool to help organisations calculate the feasibility of using outside air to cool datacentres, thus potentially saving money and improving energy efficiency

Although currently on offer to US and Canadian firms, the tool will be rolled out to other regions in the future, said the Green Grid, which includes firms such as Intel, AMD, Sun, Microsoft and EMC.

"This online tool has been developed to help datacentre and facilities managers easily determine how much free cooling and free evaporative cooling is available for individual datacentres," said a statement on The Green Grid web site.

Firms enter data such as post code, local energy costs, IT load and facility load, and the tool will calculate how much savings could be made by using outside air to help cool the datacentre.

Datacentre cooling has become an increasing problem for IT managers, with rising energy costs, increased performance demands, reduced budgets and more powerful servers being crammed in.

The tool can also be used to calculate whether water-side economisers can be used to slash datacentre power costs. These are devices that use the condensed water produced by cooling towers to provide virtually free datacentre cooling.

Green Grid members will have access to a map showing areas where they can get free cooling throughout the US and Canada.