October 7, 2009

At a forum hosted by NYSE Euronext, The Green Grid presented new tools and reports to help business leaders and data centre managers improve efficiency in their operations. Representatives from The Green Grid, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy (along with executives from a variety of industries) shared their challenges with data centre energy management and offered practical steps for improvement.

The Green Grid presented the results of a recently completed assessment
of a mid-tier data centre operated by EPA, along with recommendations
for next steps that EPA can follow to improve efficiency.

“We applaud EPA’s leadership in opening up their operations to this
level of examination, and we encourage other organizations to work with
us to develop standards and explore ways they can improve their own
operations,” said John Tuccillo, The Green Grid chair. “If the EPA can
deploy techniques that improve efficiency by 20%, they can save $15,000
per year in this one data centre. IDC estimates that there are 75,000
similar-sized data centres across the United States and, if all of them
could achieve that same level of savings, more than $1.1 billion in
annual energy costs could be avoided in data centres across the
country.”

The Green Grid continues to assist the DoE in testing and validating
the DC Pro tool, an online software tool provided by DoE to help
industries identify how energy is being consumed by their data
centre(s) and identify the best opportunities for savings. The two are
now working together to enhance the software tool suite by: ensuring
common energy metrics between The Green Grid tools, DC Pro and the
Energy Star portfolio manager tool; developing an IT energy assessment
module and; creating a complementary Certified Energy Practitioner
program where data centre energy professionals would perform energy
assessments using DC Pro.

The Green Grid also announced new free online tools and maps designed
to help data centre and facilities managers in Japan and 33 European
countries easily determine how much outside air (‘free cooling’) is
available for individual data centres. These new tools provide with
real-world data to help lower energy consumption and related costs.

Finally, The Green Grid introduced a new free online tool for data
centre managers to record their Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) scores
that will establish global consistency in reporting the split between
energy flowing to IT equipment and facility operations.

THE GREEN GRID