Why would you want to measure power consumption?

The investment in intelligent PDUs or other forms of energy submeters seems trifling in view of the total investment in the electrical infrastructure of a data centre. Nevertheless, the costs are not insignificant and are usually not considered in the calculation of the building costs. This is why the question WHY? still comes up regularly.

 

You can answer the question by looking at the function of the PDU:

  • Measuring energy
  • Power distribution
  • Protection of the infrastructure

However, this is a technical approach which we would like to go into in the product pages on this site. Investment in energy submeters goes further than just the technical specifications. What matters here are the indirect consequences of the presence of meters and monitoring.

 

Energy saving

First of all, energy meters ensure lower energy consumption. This is not only an economic motivation, it is also a moral obligation to make every effort to reduce energy consumption in general. Data centres are certainly in the spotlight because of their extremely high energy consumption. By measuring the consumption and passing the cost on to the consumers, the consumers will become aware of it by themselves. This awareness will ensure that in future they will be watching the energy consumption of their equipment closely. They will decide to buy more economical hardware, and software suppliers will come under pressure to deal with the hardware more efficiently.  The energy submeter is the catalyst in this process and can be used to monitor improvements.

 

Availability

A second consequence of metering is that quality of the power distribution in the data centre is improved. This is because the measurements enable us to identify consumption peaks. Spotting these peaks in time makes it possible to take actions to prevent failure, for example by spreading loads in the data centre.  Yet another aspect that is important to the availability of the data centre is the safety provisions built into a PDU. Overvoltage protection devices and overload and short-circuit fuses are devices that ensure that faults in the power supply are isolated as far as possible and that they have no effect on other equipment. The correct choice of protection depends on the data centre’s infrastructure. The ideal configuration can be determined for each PDU.

 

Governmental pressure

Governments are increasingly taxing energy consumption. In countries around us, legislation is already in force that requires large energy consumers to have and disclose detailed energy monitoring systems. If these requirements are not complied with, stiff fines can be imposed. More and more countries will amend their legislation in order to force large consumers to take steps to reduce their consumption. A first requirement is to measure and record the energy flows. On the basis of the measurements, improvements can be tested and it is possible to prove that efforts are being made to make the enterprise more efficient.