New statistics are showing that while consumers across the globe may still be leaving their light switches on, data centers are saving a bit more on electricity.
According to an independent report performed by Stanford University civil and environmental engineering department consulting professor, Jonathan G. Koomey, Ph.D., electricity use in data centers has been lagging in the past five years, as opposed to 2000 to 2005, when data center electricity use doubled. From 2005 to 2010, electricity use rose about 36 percent in the U.S., and 56 percent worldwide.
In addition, Koomey estimates that global data centers consumed between 1.1 percent and 1.5 percent last year, whereas U.S. data centers used between 1.7 and 2.2 percent – a major contradiction to previous estimates.
According to the New York Times, the Environmental Protection Agency predicted in a 2007 forecast that the “explosive expansion of the Internet and the computerization of society” would lend itself to a massive growth in power consumed by data centers over the last five years.
These new statistics, however, reveal the contrary.
“Mostly because of the recession, but also because of a few changes in the way these facilities are designed and operated, data center electricity consumption is clearly much lower than what was expected, and that’s really the big story,” Koomey told the New York Times in regards to his report, entitled “Growth in Data Center Power Use 2005 to 2010.”
Experts are attributing this lower-than-expected electricity growth rate to the recent economic recession, a stronger focus on energy efficiency, and even cloud computing.
"Because cloud computing installations typically have much higher server utilization levels and infrastructure efficiencies than do in-house data centers (with power usage effectiveness for some specific facilities lower than 1.1) increased adoption of cloud architectures will result in lower electricity use than if the same computing services were delivered using more conventional approaches," Koomey wrote in his study, as reported by CNet.
Nowadays, there are a number of methods to help data centers save exponentially on energy usage. In addition to virtualization and innovative designs such as hot and cold aisles of equipment, some data centers are turning to monitoring software.
For example, as reported by TMCnet, one company, JouleX, introduced new software that centrally monitors and controls the energy usage of any networked device in a data center – from core routers and switches to storage and power distribution units. Without the need for client-side agents or hardware meters, the software uses a unique discovery method to automatically find every device on the corporate network and then get a global view of energy consumption.
Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Jamie Epstein
