Data Centre Powerplays as Global Energy Supplies Hit

Power Plays as Global Energy Supplies Hit

The future leaders of the data storage industry will be those who have the ability to effectively modify existing facilities and build new facilities that deliver best practice NABERS ratings of circa 6, with minimal or no cooling water consumption and best practice (true) carbon emissions or better.

This requirement will be driven by client expectation and the ability to pass on improved operating costs to co-location partners and cloud service providers.

This energy management challenge combined with the emerging improvements in SSD energy consumption will impact current the value, forecast revenue stream, existing asset layout and business strategy of many existing providers as revenue is typically based on rack power sales.

Future energy efficiency measures post PUE must consider total energy efficiency, recognising the complete energy supply chain carbon emissions and consumption, compared to energy consumed by the technical load. 

For centres that purchase renewable energy contributed to the grid equivalent to 100% of the energy consumed, we should recognise that in times of insufficient renewable contribution to the grid, actual energy consumed by the data facility does include significant contribution from non-renewable sources, with significant supply chain carbon emissions. This energy supply strategy does impact the wider grid asset mix resulting in a higher average emissions position by retaining less efficient peaking generation assets to cover renewable generation shortfalls.

Also, those facilities that do not need to rely on de-rated performance measures for partial technical load or facility utilisation will be those that attract target clients, maintain the lowest operating cost and set the energy management benchmark into the future.

Moving away from the PUE measure will hopefully result in a measure that rewards those that offer best practice holistic energy and environmental outcomes.