The Green Grid's EPA Data Center Case Study
This report highlights how The Green Grid and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were able to use simple, low-cost best practices in one data center to achieve a 20 percent increase in energy efficiency, saving $15,000 per year in energy costs.
From the introduction to the report:
In April of 2008, The Green Grid signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to promote energy effi ciency in small to mid-sized data centers. This effort promotes the innovative efforts of the Information Technology (IT) industry and EPA to facilitate the improvements in the energy effi ciency of computing facilities.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, data centers across the United States accounted for 1.5 percent of total US electricity demand in 2006 -- equivalent to the annual electric consumption of the state of Florida -- and have become one of the fastest growing users of energy. While the power consumed at these individual data centers may be small, they are numerous at EPA and other large organizations. IDC estimates that in the US there are 3.6 million servers in closets and rooms, 3.2 million mid-tier servers, and roughly 3.1 million servers in the enterprise-class space. Therefore, this report is relevant to roughly one-third of the servers in the United States.
The following is the initial report documenting fi ndings and making recommendations around a typical EPA mid-tier data center in the Washington D.C. area: One Potomac Yard (OPY). The Green Grid Assessment found that OPY is currently underutilized and has a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of approximately 2.9. Total power for the data center is estimated to be 132 kW, with approximately 45 kW used by the IT equipment, and 87 kW consumed by cooling, power distribution, and lighting. OPY's density is currently less than 25 W/ sq ft. There are a number of specific cooling system design issues that if addressed could increase cooling system effi ciency at OPY.
