by Brianna Crandall — September 30, 2015—Future Resource Engineering (FRE), which identifies data center operational and power optimization opportunities, has released a new white paper that details five steps to creating a data center efficiency plan.
The white paper, titled Creating a Data Center Efficiency Plan: Challenges & Steps to Creating an Effective and Impactful Energy Efficiency Plan, provides data center owners and operators with an extensive blueprint that outlines required steps. It offers solutions to common data center energy challenges, analyzes what information is relevant when determining savings, and identifies the factors to consider when determining a project’s return on investment (ROI).
The focus of every data center manager is uptime and reliability, notes FRE, although significant time is spent on other important tasks: capacity planning, responding to customer requests, and resolving equipment issues. This often leaves little time for efficiency improvements that can yield significant cost savings.
At the same time, the growing power consumption of data centers has sparked numerous efforts to save energy throughout the industry. However, each facility is different, requiring its own customized plan that addresses:
- Potential efficiency opportunities
- Savings
- Available incentives
- Equipment strategies
- Payback requirements
The white paper examines how to create a data center energy efficiency plan by condensing the process into five easily understood steps, allowing data center operators to realize immediate savings to operational costs with little to no downtime.
The paper is being released at a crucial time, notes FRE. Data centers are one of the largest and fastest-growing consumers of electricity in the United States, consuming an estimated 90 billion KWh in 2013. This figure is forecast to reach 140 billion KWh by 2020, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The report concludes that it is not uncommon to find 1 million KWh of energy savings in a single efficiency project at small to mid-sized data centers, and that an efficiency project’s ROI can often be achieved within two years or less with careful planning and use of utility incentives.
The complimentary efficiency white paper, Creating a Data Center Efficiency Plan: Challenges & Steps to Creating an Effective and Impactful Energy Efficiency Plan, can be downloaded from the FRE Web site with a brief registration.
A subsidiary of RLE Technologies, Future Resource Engineering was launched in 2015 to identify energy and operational efficiency opportunities for data centers that lead to tangible savings.
