– Tom Deloye, vice president of sales and marketing with Technology Management (www.tmiamerica.com), says:
Industry sources have stated that assuming a $0.12/kWH utility rate (national average), reducing your data center electrical load by just 1kW equates to roughly a $1,000 savings per year.
A 5,000 SF data center with a load density of 5kW per cabinet (165 watts/SF) would require an 825kW UPS system capacity to serve the IT load. Using an accepted industry rule of thumb, you would double this load for the mechanical system. Assuming the facility is 65% loaded to capacity, you’re looking at a 1075 kW load.
We’re of the opinion that the average data center load can easily be reduced by 10% just by addressing the low hanging fruit. Using the example above, you’re looking at an annual savings of $108,000.
It is not out-of-line to think that with a combination of IT and facility related design enhancements, you should be able to achieve a 20-30% energy savings. This same example facility stands to realize a $3.2 million savings over a 10 year period. Not only are you saving money for your company, these improvements make you and your company better stewards of our environment.
The first step in the energy savings process would be to perform a facility assessment to identify existing conditions (benchmark) and recommendations to address both reliability and energy savings issues.
TMI is a mission-critical facilities consulting, design, and engineering services firm, as well as project advocacy and turnkey solutions provider.
