Data Center Power Usage Curve Falling

The newly-released report by Jonathan Koomey, entitled "Growth in Data Center Electricity Use 2005 to 2010," finds that the electricity usage curve is trending downward better than projected by his 2007 and 2008 studies.

Focal Points:

• In 2007 while at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Jonathan Koomey created a model of the world's server installed base and their associated electricity usage. Based on data from an Environmental Protection Agency study and IDC, this first Koomey report showed that power consumption of installed servers in both the United States and around the world was growing faster than the installed base of machines. About a year later, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) commissioned Koomey to do a follow-up study. This paper projected power consumption by the world's data centers would double between 2005 and 2010.
• Mr. Koomey just published a third report, which was commissioned by the New York Times. The report found growth in the installed base of servers slowed by early 2007 because of virtualization and other factors. The 2008 financial crisis, the associated economic slowdown, and further improvements in virtualization led to a significant reduction in the actual server installed base by 2010 compared to forecasts published in 2007.  
• The new report also noted electricity used by data centers worldwide increased by about 56 percent from 2005 to 2010 instead of doubling as it did from 2000 to 2005. In the US power usage increased by about 36 percent instead of doubling. (Figure 1).
  Figure 1. Worldwide electricity use for data centers, 2011 Koomey report
   
• Another key finding of the report was that electricity used in data centers globally in 2010 accounted for between 1.1 and 1.5 percent of total electricity use. The US electricity usage range was between 1.7 and 2.2 percent. 

Experton Group believes power usage in data centers can be reduced back to levels last seen in 2000 – an 80 percent drop in energy consumption – provided users and vendors commit to energy-saving initiatives and measure the results. The awareness and resolve to address costs associated with energy usage started to gain momentum in 2007, is approaching mainstream, and will become a standard data center metric for most organizations within the next 12 to 18 months.

The Koomey report captures some of the reasons for the slowed growth of electricity consumption but not all of them. Technology improvements such as deduplication, energy management software, and microprocessors that are more energy efficient, along with the use of the PUE metric to improve infrastructure power consumption have also contributed to bending the curve.

Once a majority of data center executives become aware of the savings potential and have a desire to pursue it, far greater power conservation gains will be achieved. IT executives should benchmark their data center energy effectiveness, evaluate the gaps, and build and execute short- and long-term initiatives to close the gaps and make data center operations as efficient as possible. These actions will improve productivity, reduce operating costs and waste, and optimize operations resources.