PUE & Cost Savings - Why go Green?

PUE and other efficiency measures on data centre are useful, but we more likely chasing the money now!
Efficient data centres have always made an effort to meet commercial needs – but the economic side of the movement may soon eclipse the “green” side, environmental issues and corporate image.

The move to the cloud is driving this. “Cloud-based services [like Facebook and Google], have the ability to build efficient data centres in locations where there is cheap power, and to highly utilise the IT equipment,” said Mark Monroe, executive director of the The Green Grid. “Their primary function is to drive the cost of a transaction down as low as it can be.”

The Green Grid has just had its annual European conference, over two days in Paris and London, and is reacting to this world, where it is all about the lowest cost for transactions. “Amazon can deliver a CPU-hour, for 10 cents,” said Monroe. He would have delivered the same measure for $3.75, two years ago, when he worked on Sun’s sustainable data centres.

It’s more about the money than the tech

The Green Grid has been known for the PUE measure of effiency, which has been picked up by various interantional bodies, and is regularly quoted for any new efficient data centre development.
At first sight, its other work looks like a continuation of that sort of effort, providing yet more ways for centres to measure their performance and compare themselves, including the still-under-development CUE and WUE measures of carbon-usage and water-usage respectively.

But alongside these measures, the group is coming up with a wide range of other material, which is increasingly designed to look hard-nosed, practical and, let’s face it, commercial.

Saving money, not PUE

The latest Green Grid White Paper surveyed members’ use of economisers, the cooling system which offers free air cooling and replaces the use of chillers.  Economisers trumpeted as a way to improve PUE. According to the survey, however, they do improve efficiency, but have no discernible effect on PUE.

“There was no statistically significant difference between the PUE reported by those who use economizers and by those who do not,” the report found.

They are taking off rapidly amongst Grid members, however, they save money. Around half the members surveyed are using economisers, and they are using them for almost all the hours allowed by the local climates (which turns out to be around 4,000 hours). They are doing so, because they are saving money – around 20 percent of the energy bill, with a payback time of around 20 months, according to Monroe.

Training program and Best Practices in Energy and Cost Savings for Data Centre

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