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July 30, 2012

The Green Data Center Opportunity - Latest Innovations in UPS Technology Improve Energy Efficiency

Brad Thrash
Product Manager, GE Energy

Power Channels: Energy Efficiency, Power Quality Protection

Despite current economic difficulties, the companies that construct and operate the data centers that run the Internet and store vast amounts of corporate and government data are expecting growth of about 19 percent this year.

This comes as no surprise when you look at the current trends in the information technology sector. This year mobile internet handsets are estimated to send more than 8 trillion text messages, process over $240 billion in mobile commerce payments and transmit more than 6 million terabytes of data. In the next decade, global digital content is forecast to increase some 30 times to 35 zettabytes (that’s 35 trillion gigabytes) and Cloud computing will grow to a $240 billion market segment.

The cost and availability of the energy needed for our power-hungry computers are top concerns. National governments and industry agree that we must find ways to control energy demand and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint. Data centers are estimated to consume 2 percent of the U.S. electrical grid capacity resulting in $2 billion per month in utility bills. A McKinsey & Company study estimates carbon dioxide emissions from data centers will quadruple to exceed emissions from the airline industry by 2020, due to the rapid growth in global demand for computing power.

A Changing Mind-set:

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is focused on “green” initiatives to improve energy efficiency and have set a target to create energy savings of 10 percent overall in U.S. data centers, which equates to 10.7 billion KWh, the equivalent of electricity consumed by 1 million typical U.S. households. While most of the recent industry effort has been on improving the efficiency of information technology (IT) and cooling equipment, the Uninterruptible Power Source (UPS) is now in the spotlight for energy optimization with manufacturers such as General Electric.

To measure data center efficiency and track improvements, the DOE, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), The Green Grid® and other organizations are developing a system of metrics. Additionally, the EPA has new programs for ENERGY STAR® ratings specifically designed for data centers, IT servers and UPS in various stages of development, while The Green Grid consortium has established the power usage effectiveness (PUE) measurement to define and track data center efficiency.

PUE, a ratio of the total power consumption divided by IT power consumption, measures the energy efficiency of the electrical and cooling infrastructure supporting the IT loads. A typical PUE is around 2.0, with the IT load, cooling system and UPS system being the largest energy consumers. However, recent energy optimization of the cooling system has resulted in a PUE of 1.5 or less for new data centers. To improve PUE below 1.5, optimization of UPS efficiency is required.

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