Power Distribution, Inc. (PDI) has released the PowerWave Bus System Color Monitor. The new 7 in., wall-mounted touch screen, color monitor is centrally located between the end feeds of multiple bus runs and extracts power data from tap off boxes and end feeds simultaneously. The company’s innovation helps minimize total devices required to manage real-time data center energy consumption.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, data centers consume as much as 20 times more energy per square foot than a typical office building.  More effective energy consumption monitoring helps data center managers with capacity planning, but getting the information often proves cumbersome.  

Dave Mulholland, PDI’s vice president of marketing and service, elaborates, “The typical power monitoring device is mounted on the end feed which is near the data center’s ceiling – this makes extracting energy consumption data difficult and expensive, as multiple conduit runs must be made to daisy chain multiple devices. The simplicity of the PowerWave Bus Color Monitor resides in its ability to be installed at eyelevel on a wall, at the server rack level. Now managers don’t need to walk the floor and climb ladders to view power consumption; they can easily identify areas where they have light or heavy power loading from a single source and use this information to drive their server adds and changes.”

The PowerWave Bus System Color Monitor may also be incorporated into existing building management systems and joins PDI’s growing family of power monitoring options, which also includes:

  • BCMS Hub – An eyelevel monitoring device that measures and remotely monitors current and voltage on each individual branch circuit, gathering power consumption data from up to 240 branch circuit monitoring devices including the PowerWave Bus System and all PDI distribution equipment.
  • PowerMap - A cloud-based software and hardware package that automatically uploads individual circuit-based power statistics and provides real-time information in a secure cloud. This solution is capable of displaying information from an unlimited number of devices.