Energy Efficiency Certifications in Data Center

Striving for energy efficiency in your data center is not only a great way to reduce operating expenses and reduce the environmental impact of the facility, but it is a way to garner PR points as well. Energy efficiency certifications are a way to provide independent verification of your efforts, and although they can be “gamed,” they still provide some metric for a more objective evaluation of data centers.

 

What Your Certification Means

Whether you’ve earned an Energy Star, LEED, or some other certification, all you really have is an independent statement that your data center was at one time up to par according to a set of standards.

The very next day after receiving the certification—as far as anyone else knows—your facility may well have thrown all the energy efficiency measures out the window. Of course, when it comes to energy efficiency, that would make little business sense: lower energy consumption means lower operating costs. Furthermore, implementing energy-efficient practices often requires supporting infrastructure with its own capital costs, and not employing that infrastructure wastes the opportunity to recoup costs and even gain a return on the investment.


The following are several tips to consider for maintaining your certification.

• Don’t make the certification your main goal.
• Work toward the best efficiency you can achieve, not just the bare minimum for certification.
• Keep track of changes in the certification standards.
• Recertify as often as is practical.
• Make energy efficiency an ongoing project, not just a task for the couple months before recertification time.
• Stay informed about new energy efficiency technologies—and choose wisely among them.
• Budget for energy efficiency.
• Be honest about the meaning of certifications.

Adopted from http://www.datacenterjournal.com