Energy balance in data centers

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Introduction

For many years, electricity consumption in data centers was the only thing that mattered besides availability.

These days, sustainability is very important. There is increasing attention for this, partly due to sustainability reports and regulations. This is also the reason that more and more people want to understand better how things actually work. Despite the fact that several KPIs have been established for data centers in the ISO/IEC 30134 series, it is not always entirely clear to everyone.

The image below shows a simplistic representation of the relationship between energy and water use. In terms of energy use, both the energy used by the data center and the energy that can be used by another process outside the data center boundary. An example of this is a heat network that uses the heat from a data center.

It also shows the relationship between energy and water.

The idea lives with people that with a data center both the lowest PUE and WUE can be achieved. Unfortunately, this is incorrect as shown in the diagram.

Potential savings through temperature increase

The figure below shows a simplistic representation of the possible results that can be achieved by increasing temperatures. Depending on the design, water savings are possible and energy can be reused more efficient.