Data centers are notorious for their inefficient use of energy. At the end of 2017, Forbes reported global data center electricity use to be about 416 terawatts (4.16x 1014 watts) or 3% of the total electricity consumed.
If you’re managing a facility with standard HVAC/mechanical systems, you probably have some form of a Building Management System (BMS). Like how the iPhone changed communication with its launch in 2007, BMS have fundamentally changed.
A dense data center does not inherently mean that it will have greater efficiency (typically, quite the opposite is true).
Tier II and Tier III markets are experiencing a rise in hosting demand as content moves to the edge. These smaller facilities in outlier locations extend the “edge” of the Internet further from the traditional Internet hubs such as New York City.
The data center industry’s ability to improve energy efficiency is massive. According to the latest U.S. Data Center Energy Usage Report published last year that examines data from 2014, data centers in the U.S. consumed an estimated 70 billion kWh.
Data center facilities of all types must monitor power and cooling data to be responsive when things go wrong, but they don’t often analyze combined data to obtain operational efficiencies.