February 8, 2010
Data Centers Can Apply for Energy Star Rating in June
The EPA hopes to launch its Energy Star program for data centers in June, reports PCWorld.
Earlier, the program had been tentatively scheduled to launch in early 2010.
Last May, EPA launched Energy Star for servers. EPA said it is working on Energy Star for uninterruptable power supplies, or UPS systems, according to PC World.
With the forthcoming rating system, data center operators will be able to assess the energy use of their facilities and receive a metric that allows them to compare how they are performing relative to their peers.
Based on the EPA’s 1-to-100 rating system, data center operators will enter basic information about their energy use and operational characteristics into a password-protected account they establish in the EPA’s Portfolio Manager, an online energy-benchmarking tool. A score of 50 indicates average performance, and a score of 75 or higher means the facility is in the top 25 percent in terms of energy efficiency, qualifying the data center for an Energy Star label.
The rating earned will be based on PUE, or power unit efficiency, a measure of the total power used by the data center, divided by the amount that actually reaches IT equipment, as opposed to being used for cooling systems or inefficient power supplies.
Some critics think that the rating system also should take into account whether a data center uses free cooling, as well as what level of redundancy the center provides.
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Reader Comments
I did a blog post about this. Essentially PUE doesn’t give you very much in understanding the energy efficiency of a data center. Hopefully they are aware of this and utilise something akin to the European Code of Conduct for Data Centres.
For my blog post which has a discussion about PUE:
http://greenituk.blogspot.com/2010/01/carbon-footprinting-and-it.html
Cameron Green | February 8th, 2010
Thanks for the post. It was interesting and informative. I look forward to more in the future.
Corelink Data Centers: Colocation | February 9th, 2010
Excellent initiative of EPA. Data-centre-technology-stake-holders need to self-initiate activities to help Data Centres achieve the proposed EPA rating globally, and have higher “Return-On-ElectricPower”.
MOHAN SUKUMAR | February 11th, 2010
It is very unfortunate they are basing it on PUE – that is the wrong number that is an over-simiplification of data center perfromance. Removing old servers and virtualizing – which are common and very effective ways to reduce energy use in the data center make PUE worse. It would be better for DOE not to provide anything at all rather than add more fuel to the fire supporting a miss-leading metric.
Mike | February 12th, 2010