Originally posted to Facilitiesnet by Katie Baker.

Today’s data centers are energy-intensive. While opportunities exist to reduce energy use, significant knowledge, training, and skills are required to perform energy assessments. For this reason, the data center industry and DOE partnered to develop the Data Center Energy Practitioner (DCEP) Program. This October, the Critical Facilities Summit kicks off with the DCEP certification course led by Julius Neudorfer, CTO of North American Access Technologies.

Explain the need for this certification.

Julius: The DCEP training program was originally developed to help federal government data centers save energy, but the information is applicable for any data center. I have taught these classes to a mix of students who are federal employees, data center consultants, and professional engineers. I’ve seen the program build on the student’s existing skill-set, providing a more in-depth examination of the energy usage processes. For example, a hidden secret in data centers is that not everybody completely understands airflow management. People tend to locate and rack IT equipment simply based on power draw, not fully understanding the balance between the cooling units in the room and the interrelationship of matching IT airflow requirements. There are a lot of misnomers in the industry. The program provides clarification. There’s good science behind it. The course teaches you how to properly use the free DOE data center tools available to you. There’s a tremendous amount of emphasis placed on this.

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