The Greening of Government: Getting To Net-Zero
Summer 2010 • Volume 2 • Number 3

Federal Data Center managers should feel lucky.

With a just a click or a call, they can get help and resources to lower their Data Center energy footprint from experts at DOE such as Paul Scheihing and Will Lintner.

Scheihing is a Technology Manager for the Industrial Technologies Program (ITP), which is part of the FEMP.

The ITP works with industry to develop and deliver technologies and practices that improve industrial energy efficiency and environmental performance according to DOE.

We have developed a variety of energy efficiency resources and we do that in collaboration with industry groups such as Green Grid and ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers), Scheihing said in a recent interview with On The FrontLines.

Data Center Diagnosis: Start With PUE

“One of the key activities is the development of a software tool called DC Pro for Data Center Profiler,” Scheihing explained. “If I’m a Data Center operator, I can use the tool to assess my energy footprint in my Data Center and to know where all energy is coming from and going to within the Data Center.”

“It also can help you identify potential energy saving opportunities and give you a rough idea of how much you can save and give you a benchmark of your Data Center’s PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) which is a measure of total of energy divided by amount going to IT.”

A perfect PUE (expressed as a ratio) is 1:1 and every dollar spent on power goes to power the IT. However, the average PUE is nearly 3:1. That means for every $1 spent on powering the IT, an additional $2 goes to other things such as AC and power conversion. The DC Pro Tool helps IT managers to assess what they need to manage their energy use more efficiently.

Scheihing explained the ITP has developed a one day awareness training program in conjunction with ASHRAE geared towards Data Center operators to get these people to understand the basic principles of how to manage energy in a facility.

Also, there is an effort underway to certify professionals in the marketplace on their ability to perform an energy assessment in a Data Center aka as a Data Center Certified Energy Practitioner.

“My job is to provide energy efficiency resources to make any kind of Data Center efficient both private and public sector. Will’s job in FEMP is to make the federal sector more efficient,” said Scheihing.

FEMP Focus

Will is FEMP’s Will Lintner. He is the Project Manager for the federal sector for the Laboratories for the 21st Century Program.

“What my office does is facilitate the implementation of energy management throughout the federal government,” Linter, DOE told On The FrontLines in a recent interview.

“We don’t necessarily fund projects, but we provide the federal agency with tools, help them find funding for projects and we help them identify what projects they need to do.”

In his role, Linter is a member of the Federal Interagency Energy Management Task Force (IATF) where he consults and coordinates with other agency officials on a regular basis on making better business decisions on how to efficiently manage IT.

Linter says there are probably over 1,000 Data Centers in government spread all over the place and that the DC Pro Tool has been used by more than 200 groups already.

“I am basically encouraging everyone to use the tool to get baseline and benchmark for their facilities. I also supply some technical assistance to agencies through the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab,” said Lintner.

For Lintner “everyone” includes talking to both the facilities and IT sides of an organization.

“Wherever the energy is used we are looking; that’s what FEMP follows; and that’s our charter to help facilitate greater energy efficiency throughout the federal government,” Linter noted.

“If they take results of tool to heart , they can take steps to manage and using the PUE benchmark, it steers them towards the energy efficiency improvements they need to do.”

Optimization Of Capital

While Lintner is helping agencies use the tool, Scheihing and his team are continuing to work on improving the tool to make it easier to use and more robust.

Scheihing added that if we have the tool or a portfolio of tools, and we have competent people in the market place end users can call upon to identify savings opportunities, people will take action based on the good cost effective opportunities they find.

“It comes down to optimization of capital expenditures,” Scheihing explained. “Energy use is part of the equation. We are coming to time when inefficient energy use can be tied to inefficient use of capital. So making efficient use of energy makes good business sense.” N

Greening Progress

DOE says “the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) facilitates the federal government’s implementation of sound, cost-effective energy management and investment practices to enhance the nation’s energy security and environmental stewardship. This is delivered through project transaction services, applied technology services, and decision support services.”

FEMP’s told On The FrontLines about some of their efforts.

Data Center Best Practices Guide
“We recently we put out a best practices guide for data centers available on our FEMP website. It covers both the IT side including things like virtualization and talks about infrastructure side. It covers all the big, very easy energy conservation measures you can do,” said Linter.

Free Cooling

Linter says one of the easiest things to do is have your Data Center set temperatures to ASHRAE guidelines, which allow temperatures to be kept at 80 degrees.

“That’s hard to do because many Data Centers don’t have good air management, but they can do other things,” said Linter. Those include separating the hot and the cold aisles in the Data Center and taking advantage of “free cooling” which is taking cool air from the outside of the building and using that rather—than generating AC—to cool the Data Center.

“You can walk into a lot of centers and you see people wearing coats,” Linter noted. “If you properly manage your air flow you will not need to do that.”

Wireless Sensing

Linter further describes concurrent demonstration projects where wireless sensing is being used to manage and determine the air flow and the heating/cooling settings.

“Now that wireless sensing has come down in price a lot, you don’t need wiring for a wired solution,” said Linter. “The sensors give operators a good idea of what’s going on, where the hot spots are and they can rearrange things such as rearranging floor tiles to better manage the air. There are a ton of things that can be done that are easy.”

Linter noted that wireless sensing is quickly getting out of the test phase and it’s going to be in installation phase right now. Using sensors, readings are sent to one central management dashboard to oversee power usage, cooling and heating. He can see that in the not too distant future this type of energy management will be “SOP”.

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Challenge Yourself

Don’t sit on the sidelines, participate and challenge yourself and your organization to be more energy efficient. That's what GSA Administrator Martha Johnson is doing when with the goal of a net-zero environmental footprint for GSA, which she calls "GSA's moonshot".  

Diagnosis Green

DOE's Paul Scheihing and Will Linter provide agencies with Data Center assessment tools and help guide them to use funding more effectively in meeting their energy management objectives. 

Green Chronicles

Helping chronicle energy efficiency and renewable energy is longtime EERE Network News editor Kevin Eber. Read what Eber says is trending Green in the near future. 

The Lean Green Data Center Machine

Chuck Powers, IT Operations Director at NREL RSF shows how the new Data Center is consuming and providing energy as a part of the lab’s new net-zero sustainable green building. 

Green Proving Ground—Interview with GSA’s Kevin Kampschroer

In an On The FrontLines interview, the High Performance Buildings director describes why the renovation of the GSA HQ in DC will be a test bed for net-zero design and workplace flexibility. 

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