Modius Data Center Blog

The IT industry has focused a tremendous amount of attention to the concept of 'GREEN' over the past 5 years. Many of the players, both IT vendors and consumers of IT gear alike have created GREEN Officers or Sustainability Czars, and even whole organizations that focus on 'greening' a company or a product strategy. Green is timely and exciting and viewed as a good corporate citizen thing to do. However, the realities of COSTS are now beginning to materialize.

While it is very exciting to standup in front of your shareholders and articulate all of the GREEN initiatives in progress, there have been a number of recent 'green' projects conceived a few years ago that have been put 'on hold' pending funding. The reality of GREEN is that it COSTS money! It may cost money short term, or it may be long term. Green is not cheap. In some cases an ROI can be calculated to show savings over longer periods of time, in somes cases new technologies must be invented to make any difference in costs.

Consider the grocery store analogy. An organic pear may be 40% higher in cost than a 'generic' pear. Yes, everybody knows that organic is healthier, but how many people are willing to spend 20%-40% MORE for the Organic versions of their groceries? Oh sure, at first you tried a few, but the likelihood is that many of us switched back to regular foods and continue to buy non-Organic groceries due to cost.

Another gem... I priced a 5kW solar system for my house a year or two ago, and with a total cost of over $50K, I calculated the break-even point (after rebates!) to be 9 years! Hummm, so I would have to write a check for $50K, and then over the next 9 years would get my $50K back, and THEN I might start saving money...

In the world of IT, we have the same thing happening today. Many of the biggest companies that jumped into 'GREEN' early because they thought it was a good corporate citizen move while at the same time believing it would somehow save them money, are now finding that 'going green' COSTS money. REAL money! It may be an upfront cost with a 3-5 year payback, or it could be permanent ongoing costs. The fact is TODAY that a kW of power generated by Wind or Solar has a cost of 5-10 TIMES that of fossil fuel generate power. (See the URL: http://greenecon.net/understanding-the-cost-of-solar-energy/energy_economics.html).

Our best bet today is to use advanced monitoring to determine WHERE energy is being used, and how exactly how much by each application. This will set the stage for future investments in green technologies to be deployed. And remember, "Going Green" does NOT mean your energy efficiency is going to be better. You could running your entire data center on renewable power, but do so with a horrible PUE due to process and architecture problems. Wasting a watt is wasting a watt, regardless of where the watt came from.

We have the opportunity to push each other towards data center innovation, the creation of new power and cooling technologies, various regulatory reforms to spur investment even furthar and above all, demand accountability across the board.

With all of the efforts to get energy under control, it is not surprising that there are a number of new energy bills making their way through congress. One of the most 'spectacular' in-process bills with wide-ranging energy inferences is the Waxman-Markey Bill, or "HR2454". Officially it is called the "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009" and it has three basic parts. This summary is provided by the Congressional research Service as follows:

"American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 - Sets forth provisions concerning clean energy, energy efficiency, reducing global warming pollution, transitioning to a clean energy economy, and providing for agriculture and forestry related offsets. Includes provisions: (1) creating a combined energy efficiency and renewable electricity standard and requiring retail electricity suppliers to meet 20% of their demand through renewable electricity and electricity savings by 2020; (2) setting a goal of, and requiring a strategic plan for, improving overall U.S. energy productivity by at least 2.5% per year by 2012 and maintaining that improvement rate through 2030; and (3) establishing a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and setting goals for reducing such emissions from covered sources by 83% of 2005 levels by 2050."

So what does this mean for us? Well, the first point is a good one: Energy Suppliers will have to create at least 20% of their power from renewable sources over the next 10 years. Like Solar and Wind power. Sounds good huh? Green as it gets. The only drawback to you and me is cost. Green is expensive. Using today's technologies, Green power will increase the price per kW for residential, commercial and industrial users. Greening is good for the environment, but will increase the rate at which power bills go UP. Nothing in life is FREE.

The second point is where we can all get more actively involved. Personally. For the next 20 years, we are all expected to help the nation become 2.5% (year over year) more efficient in our use of power at home and at work. Every year, 2.5% more effective, compounded. To do so, we'll all be buying CFLs and LED lights, using more microwave ovens, and during the summer at work we'll all enjoy the same 76-degree office temperatures that our datacenters will be driven to. Energy Efficiency is the name of the game! The car makers will also step up and happily sell us hybrid and BEV vehicles to help do their part. (Have you seen the new CODA Automotive BEV cars? Cool.)

Lastly, the bill states that we (the country) need to reduce total Carbon emissions by more than 80% of the level that we saw in 2005... but we have 40 years to do so. Hummm... Imagine the amount of change required in these 40 years to reduce carbon emssions by 80%, but then again, consider what life was like 40 years ago in 1970; The commercial cell phone didn't yet exist, nor did iPods and x86 computers, we hadn't seen Disco or StarWars yet, color TVs were just coming out and all the cars had V-8 engines! 

Actually, I am a huge proponent of this and similiar bills. It significantly raises the awareness that we ALL need to do something, NOW! Every light left on, every old server left spinning, every little piece counts. If we can all just get in the normal mode of saving energy because it's the right thing to do, then we all relish in the long-term rewards from doing so...

OK we have heard about the 'Greening' world around us, the price of power, the costs of cooling, the need for energy efficiency and ultimately The Green Grid's "PUE" KPI for a few years now. What originally sounded like a great way to definitively calculate the energy efficiency of getting IT work done, still seems like a great way to do so, but also seems like just the START of the journey...

Remembering that alot of work went in to the creation of PUE, it is considered by many to be a great place to start TODAY towards the goal of optimizing energy usage. Remember, you can't optimize that which you don't understand. That said, PUE may not be viewed down the road as the single best metric, but for now, it is MUCH better than what we had just a few years ago. Nothing. PUE is a metric that is well understood and can be determined for ANY END-USER that chooses to calculate it. It can be calculated in real-time using a fairly small investment in time and resources.

Today the EPA took the next step to allow end-users to compare their energy conservation and efficiency efforts to those of their peers. Basically, any company the wishes to can audit their PUE, document their findings, hire a PROFESSIONAL (recognized audit partner) to verify their claims, and then submit to the EPA. Those data centers that rank in the top 25% of their peer group will be considered as having an 'Energy Star' compliant data center. (And the bragging rights that go with the star).

So what does this mean to the industry? Well, I think we'll hear alot of companies that applaud the move by the EPA for Energy Star data center recognition. Many companies have worked hard to eliminate energy inefficiencies and love telling the world about their successes. The new Energy Star rating will allow this message to be even louder, since it will provide some apples-to-apples comparison. It supports the ROI measurements for these efforts. Peers will get a sense of what is POSSIBLE by people doing like environments. Some CIOs and CFOs will stand up and say, "Why is my closest competitor X% more energy efficient making the same type of widget?"

We will also see a bunch of complaining about the use of 'PUE' as the main KPI used in the determination for Energy Star. The more vocal opponents will argue that PUE as a KPI is err'd from the start or meaningless and can be manipulated or contrivedby the unscrupulous. In turn, we'll see a resurgence of pushes for "DCeP" (or one of the 10 proposed proxies) as a better KPI from these nay-sayers. I say it's good to see more energy on KPIs like DCeP, but we need some forcing function, NOW! Rememeber, the goal is to get companies to ACT NOW... mid course corrections welcome!

I think PUE was a great first step. I think Energy Star for Servers and then Energy Star for Data Centers is a great SECOND step(s), but why would we be nieve to think all of this would stop there?

Energy Star for Data Centers is circa 2010. Perhaps the folks at EPA will have a Energy-Star-PLUS recognition in 2012 (they could call it "Energy Star for Data Centers 2012" or similiar nomenclature) based upon any potentially agreed upon proxy for DCeP. Or perhaps they would use a different metric/KPI? Not sure. But what I am sure is, that we need to force ENERGY EFFICIENCY PROGRESS NOW. For companies to stand up, articulate their best practices and be tested and challenged by their constituents. We all need to LISTEN and LEARN from each other.

Status quo will no longer work. As an industry we need to push the design and re-architectures of existing space to be highly efficient. Too much waste in the past and nobody really understood it. We need to do the hard work, build containment aisles or modify air flow on on inlet-temp or overall pressure, we need to install sensors and monitoring, install spot cooling, refresh older hardware servers, etc. etc etc.

The energy efficiency work has just started,  and it's a very long road ahead. Let's stay on track and work towards a common goal. Doing more with less, making every KiloWatt count, reducing the cost of doing business. Remember, we are all on the same planet, using the same resources.

The EPA's "Energy Star for Data Centers" 2010 is a GOOD thing...