The Green Grid, a consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers, along with several government and industrial organizations have collectively reached an agreement on the guiding principles of data center energy efficiency metrics.
The participating government and industrial organizations members include US DOE’s Save Now and Federal Energy Management Programs, US EPA’s Energy Star Program, EU Code of Conduct, Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s Green IT Initiative, and Japan’s Green IT Promotion Council.
As part of the agreement, these organizations will continue working to ensure data center efficiency metrics and apply measurements and reporting conventions at the global level.As the basis for these guiding principles, Green Grid and the aforementioned organizations have designated Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as the industry’s preferred energy efficiency metric.
The group will leverage the guiding principles to help drive a universal understanding of energy efficiency metrics and generate dialogue to improve data center efficiencies. A global task force with representatives from each of the above mentioned organizations will continue to move this initiative forward and reconvene later this year to evaluate progress.
In support of the US EPA’s ongoing efforts to reduce energy consumption in servers, storage devices and data centers as a whole, The Green Grid has established an EPA Energy Star Program Management Office.
This office, headed by members of Green Grid’s board of directors, aims to position the consortium as a technical advisor to the US EPA’s Energy Star program.
Green Grid also supports the EPA in its efforts to lead IT industry collaboration in the development of Energy Star efforts, including standards for servers, storage, UPS and data center systems and related component level equipment.
Tom Brey, secretary of The Green Grid and representative of IBM, said: ”The ultimate goal is to create a set of globally accepted metrics for data center energy efficiency. One of the first, and perhaps most important factors to successfully achieving this aim is establishing a unity of communication.
”The Green Grid is working with organizations around the world to develop a clear and well-defined language for the way we communicate about energy efficiency metrics, which will give us a common measuring stick for all data centers regardless of their location.”