Data Center Energy Efficiency Tips

Monitoring your Data Center Consumption

Airflow Management Strategies

• Take advantage of “Hot Aisle/Cold Aisle” layouts – Hot and Cold Aisles are a way to optimize your space between continuous running servers vs. variable running servers.
• Contain server racks — This will help avoid mixing cold supply air with hot exhaust air.
• Retrofit your air conditioning with variable speed fan drives — Being able to adjust fan speed to accommodate changing cooling loads in your data center.
• Review general airflow improvement tips – Talk to an engineer for the best recommendation of installation of things like blanking panels, structured cabling or grommets to improve operational efficiency.

HVAC Adjustments

• Adjust the temperature and humidity — Data centers can save 4% to 5% in energy costs for every 1°F increase in server inlet temperature.
• Install an air-side economizer — Bring outside cooling air into a building. Because data centers must be cooled 24/7, 365 days per year, airside economizers may even make sense in hot climates, where they can take advantage of cooler evenings and winter air temperatures to save 60% on cooling.
• Install a water-side economizer — Use the evaporative cooling capacity of a cooling tower to produce chilled water during the winter months. Chilled water plant costs are reduced by up to 70% during water-side economizer operations.

Power Infrastructure

• Use smart PDUs (Power Distribution Units) to help monitor energy use and to cut down on energy loss.
• Smart PDUs can also help benchmark energy statistics and analysis within your data center and this can in-turn be helpful for energy planning/budgeting.
• DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) can also be helpful to ensure that smart PDUs are being used most efficiently and can help forecast future capacity trends for data center energy usage.

Many of the world’s top data center operators enjoy quick paybacks when implementing the above strategies in their facilities.

Data Center Power Consumption Statistics

• 40% of data centers costs come directly from the energy needed to power and cool the servers and equipment.
• For an average, single data center, it will use the equivalent of 25,000 residential homes.
• 5.75 million servers across the world every year for a variety of industries and uses.
• 100x the power of a standard commercial building is what an average data center uses on an annual basis.
• 3-5 years is how often a data center upgrades or changes out to new equipment. Doing this can possibly increase their energy costs.
• 3-5% of global electricity will be used by data centers during 2022. The Natural Resources Defense Council say that number will continue to grow.
• 8% of all new data centers will be powered by green energy and be more efficient than any years prior.
• There are 3 million data centers across the U.S. This equated to roughly 1 data center per 100 people in the U.S., giving them access to the internet.
• 5% of the U.S. electricity usage is consumed by data centers.
• The continuous effort to make data centers more efficient could mean that the U.S. is saving more than 20 billion kWh's of energy in 2022. That's roughly $2 billion in energy cost savings.
• A large portion of the Federal Government's electricity usage comes from government-owned or funded data centers. In 2022, it surpassed 10% of the total Federal Government's usage.

Sources:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/10-facts-know-about-data-centers

https://www.ciena.com/insights/articles/Twelve-Mind-blowing-Data-Center-Facts-You-Need-to-Know.html

https://enabledenergy.net/blog/did-you-know-these-data-center-facts/