Addressing The Challenge Of Reducing Power Consumption

According to experts, an estimated 2% of global energy consumption goes into IT applications including Datacentres (DC). Servers alone consume as much as 50% of the power coming into the DC. Around 27% of the power going into it is consumed by storage. CIOs are constantly looking for ways to restrict this power usage by DCs and are also extending it further through the Building Management System (BMS).

Power monitoring is proving to be an efficient tool to keep tabs on the power consumption in enterprises and this practice has to be followed by the IT Department in collaboration with the facility management.

Synching IT and Facility Management

Bharati Axa Life has purchased a new place to house its DC in Goregaon, Mumbai. Here, Bharati Axa Life has engaged with the facility management, right from deciding on the footprint as well as how much power will be consumed. “Everything will be taken into account, including the layout, the area that will be consumed, ways to provide cooling, networking and majorly how we will control this environment from various security threats. All these aspects have been discussed and decided upon with the facility management team in the planning stage itself,” said Ajay Patil, VP-IT, Bharati Axa Life.

Sanjay Motwani, Country Manager, Raritan India explains, “Maximum consumption of power is by the DC, but the person in charge of power is the Facility Manager or the IT administrator. Unfortunately, he/she has no control over its utilisation .So, the administrator has to work very closely with the CIO and both of them have to take a decision on how to plan power management within the data centre.

Power bills don’t fall under the purview of the CIO. As this responsibility lies with the Facility Manager he/she must know how it is being consumed and where power can be saved, adds Motwani. The two have to work in tandem and very closely with each other to understand the power usage pattern to take positive steps towards a greener datacentre.

Power monitoring at various levels is also a method by which power can be saved.

Device Level Monitoring

The CIO in his/her own capacity should take all effective steps for managing and monitoring power consumption. One such step is rack and device level monitoring.

According to Rajesh Patil, Corp. Manager, Crisil, energy consumption varies with servers. To distribute operating costs among users as per the usage, the distribution should be uniform. Also, identifying the problem is of high importance. For example, if a server isn’t performing to its optimum level, one should be able to locate where the fault lies. Macro level management will help in this respect.

Sanjay Motwani goes onto to say that in an idle state, a server utilises about 175 watts of power, but when it’s running at 100 % utilisation, it’s using about 250 - 275 watts of power. “Now, if you have two servers using 30% on an aggregate, then the power consumption on the two servers is 210 + 210, that’s 420.But on the other hand if you were to make one server utilise 60% of power, delivering the same application, then you would use about 225 watts .So on measuring, you would know how many watts you are using and would be able to calculate the reduction in power consumption.”

Motwani feels that unless and until the metrics are known, it is difficult to manage the power consumption by each device. So eventually what will happen is that companies will keep provisioning for power, resulting in saving on equipment such as UPS, generators being installed. So, it is very important to understand the metrics of power consumption.

Importance of Power Audit

Anwer Bagdadi, Promoter & CEO - Kashif Technology & Innovation, explaining the importance of power audit, said, “Power audit gives a comparative view of the electrical connections against the designs to find out if the connections are using and consuming the same amount of power and if they still continue to be same.”

The reason it is treated with a lot of importance because, neutral power never remains the same in most spaces. Impedance can be caused due to a number of factors depending on the place, shift of power etc and that can actually make power consumption and usage very different from what it was. Many racks may have servers, but many others may also have other switches, routers, PABXs and each one of them may have a different consumption pattern and rating. This would draw the actual picture as to how much is the deviation in terms of the budgeted figures for power consumption and whether it has been surpassed them or fallen short. This becomes possible by ‘Psower Audit’.

Building Management System

Enterprises are now entering the next level of power management that goes beyond datacenters, and covers all type of power consumption in the building by designing the Building Management System (BMS).

Crisil’s Patil, adds to this saying, “BMS gives you an overview of what is happening in the enterprise. For example, in a datacenter the BMS can tell you what the power consumption of a Precision Air Conditioning (PAC) system or a particular rack is, or a system installed in a server. So you can identify what is happening where.”

Also parameters like power, illumination, smoke, fire, leak detection system can be managed and monitored under this BMS.

Anwer Bagdadi adds on saying that all their buildings have implemented BMS, so parameters like air flow, temperature and electrical consumption are all monitored. In case the threshold for these parameters change, then it sounds off an alert in the BMS. BMS doesn’t only alert on the threshold but also specifies what action needs to be taken in such a situation.

The concept of Green Buildings is also catching up fast. The core objective is to keep them environment friendly and less energy consumption. Also, these buildings are oriented in such a way that sunlight is used instead of electrical lights for the most possible time however, the heat remains out of the building.

Green Organisations

Patil explains that the idea of green building starts from the planning stage. Orientation of the building according to the sun rise and sun set and the plot layout has been to be taken into consideration while making a green building. Sunlight plays a huge role in heat coming into the building. “If you don’t orient it properly there could be a difference of 2- 5% of energy consumption in terms of heat getting into the building. So, the energy on the ACs goes up. Now if you have natural light coming into the building, you can easily save energy on artificial lighting in the building.”

“Using carpets that are of renewable material, bamboos or VOC3 paints, organic compounds that are not available and avoiding chemicals in laminates can lead to a greener building, a building that is non- polluted and is environmental friendly and hence, human friendly,” concludes Patil.