Emerson Shows Data Centers How to Take the Heat Out

Facing tight budgets, carbon footprint concerns, and high energy costs, CIOs and IT managers are looking for ways to save money, lower energy use, and squeeze more efficiency out of their power-hungry, heat-sensitive data centres. Emerson’s Energy Logic strategies show them how to do it... by reducing excess heat load in the first place.

• If current energy usage trends continue, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicts U.S. data centers will use more than 100 billion kWh by 2011, representing $7.4 billion in annual electricity costs and 2.5 percent of the nation’s total electricity.
• To help the industry tackle these challenges, Emerson has developed Energy Logic, the first-ever holistic approach to data center energy reduction, based on quantitative analysis, and with an emphasis on reducing excess heat load in the first place.
• Following Emerson’s recommended actions can reduce a data center’s energy consumption by at least 50 percent using existing technologies – and, in the process, help the data center industry globally save billions of dollars in energy costs.
• The key insight that emerged from this analysis was that the best way to reduce energy consumption in a data center is to start with the IT equipment because savings at the IT equipment level “cascade” through the supporting infrastructure.
• Using this analysis, Emerson has identified the top 10 strategies for improving data center energy efficiency, starting with the IT equipment and progressing to the support infrastructure, including cooling systems.
• These strategies have the added benefit of alleviating the three most critical constraints faced by data center managers today: power, cooling, and space capacities.
• To complement its Energy Logic strategies, Emerson has also introduced an Energy Logic efficiency calculator that data center professionals can use to measure their facility’s energy efficiency, helping them to benchmark performance vs. energy use.

Read the full report here.