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Energy efficient IT-technology for data centres and server rooms: case studies, procurement guidelines and educational experience from the PrimeEnergyIT European project

Panel: 6. Appliances, product policy and ICT

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Carlos Patrao, ISR-University of Coimbra, Portugal
Aníbal de Almeida, ISR-University of Coimbra, Portugal
Alexander Schloesser, Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Andrea Roscetti, eERG, end-use Efficiency Research Group Energy Dept., Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Lorenzo Pagliano, eERG, end-use Efficiency Research Group Energy Dept., Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Bernd Schaeppi, Austrian Energy Agency, Austria
Thomas Bogner, Austrian Energy Agency, Austria
Laurent Lefevre, INRIA, France
Philipp Tepper, ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, Germany

Abstract

As the overall costs of supplying power, and resources increase, data center managers are beginning to examine their data center infrastructures more closely and determine where they can be more reliable, as well as more cost-effective and energy efficient. There are ways to achieve acceptable levels of performance and reliability without sacrificing the efficiency that environmentally responsible data centers require.

For the EU-27 the energy consumption of central IT hardware and infrastructure was calculated to be around 40TWh/year for 2007 which is about to 1,5% of the EU electricity consumption. With the continuous increase of data traffic and of the use of network services, the increase in the energy consumption is very likely to increase sharply in the next years.

This Intelligent Energy Europe PrimeEnergyIT project was proposed to further enhance market development for energy efficient central IT equipment with a focus on IT hardware, including servers, storage and network equipment as well as new power management technologies.

Although the energy saving potential for IT equipment is well known, the practical implementation is mostly in an early stage, particularly in small and medium size data centres, who need guidance for the planning and procurement of efficient data centre solutions. The project collected several best practice examples, developed public procurement guidelines and training materials. As part of the project more than 300 IT experts were trained in workshops all over the participating countries as an active measure to enhance energy efficiency in the field of data centre.

This paper presents two of the most successful best practice examples collected and is also focused on the energy efficiency procurement guidelines for public procurement and education and training workshops for central IT hardware and infrastructure managers.

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