A global taskforce which works to make data centres more ‘green’ has laid out steps to make measuring their energy use better.
The Green Grid which works with firms in the USA, Europe, Japan and beyond, today set out three new energy efficiency ‘metrics’, ways to measure how efficient data centres are.
Data centres have become an essential part of the modern working world. The organisation created one of the first energy standards for them in 2011, the PUE or Power Usage Effectiveness which has been taken up by companies around the world.
Now it wants to improve this with three new ‘metrics’ it describes in a public memo.
The first is a so-called ‘Green Energy Coefficient’, which works out the portion of a facility’s energy that comes from green sources. This is worked out from the green energy used by the data centre (kWh) divided by the total energy the data centre uses (kWh).
Second is the ‘Energy Reuse Factor’. The ERF identifies how much energy is exported for reuse outside of the data centre. It is worked out as reuse energy divided by total energy consumed by the data centre.
Finally, data centres could measure their ‘Carbon Usage Effectiveness’, or CUE. This would look at the total greenhouse gas emissions of a data centre relative to its IT energy consumption.
Joyce Dickerson, Board Member for The Green Grid said: “We want to make it as easy as possible for the data centre community to understand and embrace these metrics, and how they can work together. When implemented correctly, they can save organisations a lot of time, money and additional resources.”
The suggestions were made in a report called: ‘Harmonising Global Metrics for Data Center Energy Efficiency’.