Future Resource Engineering (FRE) has announced that it has identified more than 24 million kWh in energy savings which could result in $2.2 million cost savings for its data center clients this year. Additionally, the company identified more than $1.4 million in available utility incentives that these data centers can use to offset the cost of retrofitting while enjoying a faster return on investment (ROI).
Theses significant findings were identified as part of Future Resource Engineering’s three phase Data Center Optimization Process, which combines a Facility Evaluation to highlight energy and operational inefficiencies, validated Efficiency Reporting that outlines applicable utility rebates, and the Implementation of energy efficiency recommendations by the company’s seasoned engineers. This unique approach has been developed so that data center managers can realize immediate savings to operational costs with no data center downtime and minimal impact on the staff.
To calculate these figures, Future Resource Engineering evaluated forty data centers across the United States which spanned a variety of industries, including: colocation, healthcare, higher education, government and telecommunications. The computer rooms varied from 5,000 ft2 to 95,000 ft2, illustrating that energy and operational efficiency are highly sought after goals of data centers, regardless of size. The unifying factor across all sites were the best practices that data center owners and operators should be employing to reduce their energy usage, for example:
- Ensuring that all cooling resources are controlled in real-time to provide maximum efficiency, while ensuring environment conditions remain safe for IT equipment
- Monitoring cold aisles via sensors located in the data center to record temperatures and establish trends as to how cold supply air and hot return air is mixing
- Understanding the data center’s external environment so that economization methods can be employed to lower energy consumption
- Evaluating current and future IT load demands to determine if UPS equipment is right-sized and running efficiently
“I am quite pleased that our team of efficiency engineers could identify such a tremendous amount of power and cost savings for our clients in 2015,” said Chris Pullen, president, Future Resource Engineering. “With data centers projected to consume 140 billion KWh annually by 2020 in the United States, energy optimization has become a topic that owners and operators can no longer afford to put off. We look forward to working with even more data centers in 2016, helping to make a significant impact on their budgets while increasing their efficiency.”
Earlier this year, Future Resource Engineering released a complimentary white paper that highlights the challenges and steps to creating an effective and impactful data center energy efficiency plan.
