Data centres must have incentives to work on sustainability

Mr. Sachin Bhalla, Vice President and Country General Manager, Secure Power Division, India and SAARC, Schneider Electric shares how his organisation is progressing in monitoring energy efficiency and load conditions to maintain power quality at data centers. 

Today, sustainability necessitates much thought because it is about more than just power consumption. For instance, while designing a 97 per cent efficient UPS, we must consider the amount of recycled material used. Power consumption levels also must be considered. Here, a sustainability expert can help you dig deep into this situation.

Energy-efficiency technology advancements at Schneider Data Centers

To keep track of energy efficiency and make further improvements, Schneider Electric measures Power Usage Efficiency (PUE), which looks at the overall IT load conditions and power consumption. If we want a 5 MW IT load capacity, do we need to consider other factors such as energy flow? If not the PUE, what metric should any data centers monitor? And it’s getting better all the time.

How do we make data centers more sustainable?

When we talk about sustainability, it has two to three aspects; energy efficiency, condition monitoring, and hiring a sustainability expert to objectively assess your water consumption and energy consumption while mapping your data Centre.

Moreover, because the rest can be counted as CAPEX, data centre electricity is likely the most expensive cost in data centre operations. We must figure out how to make electricity less harmful to the environment. Here electricity 4.0 comes into play. Electricity 4.0 refers to the convergence of electricity and digital technology. What are the best ways to expand digital’s potential? How can we collectively harness the power of electricity? This is the next step in the process. We now have IoT in electrical devices, for example, to track consumption. So, digital electricity is used to reduce the amount of energy consumed. 

Secondly, non-electrical power sources should be converted into electrical power sources. Our IC engines, for example, are likely to be 50–60 per cent efficient, whereas electricity is 90–95 per cent efficient. So, how do we make the transition from fossil-fuel-based to electric based technologies? The third question is how we can use renewable energy sources in place of non-renewable energy sources. We also have self-optimising systems that use AI and machine learning algorithms.

The gap is currently quite large. Customers must demand sustainability, and data center operators must have incentives to work more on sustainability. Because of the increased demand, more data center operators are considering long-term planning. They’ve tasked their teams with figuring out how to be more sustainable. We see customers putting them under a lot of pressure and saying things like, “We will only work with you if you are more sustainable.” However, there is still much room for improvement in the actual on-the-ground implementation of sustainable products or services. I believe that awareness will increase in three to four years. 

Schneider Electric solutions for Data centers

Schneider Electric offers solutions and services to create new data centers, upgrade retrofit, and right-size on premises, hybrid architectures. At Schneider Electric, we have a vision for Data centers of the Future powered by Electricity 4.0, allowing data center operations to become more sustainable, efficient, adaptable, and resilient. 

We have a variety of software, products and services for Data centers and Networks like EcoStruxure IT Advisor, Resource Advisor, Asset Advisor, Power Advisor, Building Advisor etc. Now we’re forming a vision about where data centre performance will go in the future. The main focus is the four vectors of Sustainability, Efficiency, Adaptability, and Resiliency. This framework is a mix of what we can do today and things we have on the road map to do in the future.

With our EcoStruxure IT Advisor, our users get an overview of the current network connections while keeping track of the assets without making multiple trips to the data centres. Users can also automate work orders and define processes to ensure that human error is reduced and best practices are deployed across all aspects. 

(Inputs from the press meet held by Schneider Electric recently in New Delhi.)