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Emerson Network Power encouraged its customers and data center operators throughout North America to participate in an opportunity to define a range of criteria applicable to a future Energy Star Data Center Infrastructure Rating. When completed, the rating will help data center operators assess the energy performance of their building’s infrastructure assets and compare their performance to their peers across the United States.
In close collaboration with Emerson Network Power and other industry partners, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sought out more than 100 organizations with 1,000-square-foot and bigger data centers to voluntarily sign up by June 1, 2008, to provide energy use and other data that will help develop the Energy Star Data Center Infrastructure Rating. Participants must collect 12 consecutive months of IT and building (whole building, if stand-alone, or data center portion only, if within a larger building) energy-use data, and submit this data no later than June 1, 2009.
“We believe that a data center energy standard should be based on what is actually occurring in facilities today because organizations are not able to improve what they don’t measure,” said Jack Pouchet, director of energy initiatives, Emerson Network Power. Organizations that engage with Emerson Network Power for a data center assessment can compile information for the EPA study and establish an internal reporting system. While assessing a data center’s power and cooling capacities and strategies, a local sales representative from Emerson Network Power will gather needed figures about data center operational performance.
According to the EPA, the rating will be usable for both stand-alone data centers as well as data centers housed within an office or other buildings. It will assess performance at the building level to explain how a building performs relative to its peers.
After going through this process, the IT industry will join many other industries that operate with an Energy Star rating for their buildings, including real estate, government, healthcare, education, industrial and retail, among others.
For more information visit www.emersonnetworkpower.com/energystar.
