A Tested Guide to Calculating PUE Efficiency

Power Usage Effectiveness Is Vital

Going green can mean more than just using renewable energy sources.

Power Usage Effectiveness (or PUE, as it is commonly known) is a way in which businesses and other institutions regulate their energy consumption and try to improve it for the better. This does not always mean “going green” in the traditional sense, although it can; rather, PUE relates to how a business can maximize its energy usage, so it is not wasting energy unnecessarily. This is a great strategy because it can end up saving a business-especially a large business- quite a bit of money when all is said and done.

Power usage effectiveness is especially prevalent among data centers. There are many issues that come up when trying to save energy at data centers because of the massive amount of energy that is needed to operate them efficiently. Here are some of the most common problems that come up:

• Many devices draw power at data centers, but are difficult to measure in traditional energy usage standards.
• Some data system subcenters may not be taken into account when measuring the PUE efficiency levels.
• Many data center subcenters are combined with multi-use buildings, and therefore it is difficult to determine who is using what energy.
• Many items used in data centers are just inefficient, and cannot be changed to use less power, no matter what you do.
• Some energy usage has nothing to do with data centers, but is included anyway, because there is no practical way to separate the energy uses.

So, as you can see, calculating the PUE efficiency of any data center is a very confusing a difficult thing, but there are ways to simplify the process so anyone can understand it. There are many challenges when calculation PUE, but it is not impossible.

The formula for calculating PUE efficiency in data centers

PUE= TFP/ IEP: this is the formula that is used to measure PUE in data centers. TFP refers to the total facility power usage. Like stated before, most data centers are part of a mixed use building, so this number represents that energy that is used by all the uses in the building, and not just the data center in particular. IEP refers to the IT equipment power usage, which is the energy that can be directly traced to IT uses by the data center. What this calculation does is explains how much energy usage can be directly traced to the data center as a ratio of comparison to how much energy the entire facility uses. In the end, this will show what amount of energy the data center uses, and therefore can help determine how to better use that energy and thus save money in the end.

Author Bio: Whit is a freelance writer for many websites and blogs, and specializes in the subjects of green living, environmentalism and various health insurance subjects.