Now That the Power’s Lower, What Do I Do?
Part Three of Three

As data center professionals employ techniques to save energy in the data center, the big hammer is the outright reduction of the power the process consumes. This is very different from raising the efficiency of the systems that serve that load. The changes infrastructure professionals employ to make the MEP systems more efficient are granular versus the wholesale level savings in power of driven by new system adoption and virtualization. The mathematics are simply – you simply save more power by modifying the process versus modifying the systems that support the process.

As MEP system “guys”, virtualization is more of a blessing than a curse. Virtualization does significantly reduce both power consumption and raised floor occupation. The only sharp side to the argument is that radical virtualization will naturally drive down energy consumption. It also means that the IT systems will knock the UPS and critical power systems out of their efficiency sweet spots and into the lower end of their performance curves.

Don’t be a victim – here are some ideas:

• Take systems off line to increase loading on the systems that remain to serve the load.
• Undertake system modifications, enhancements or replacements while the load has decreased.
• Take the opportunity to revisit your raised floor planning rules for equipment placement, circuiting, air flow and adjacencies.

Next blog – metering, and how all meters are not created equally. And how you should employ metering to most accurately determine your PUE.