Benchmarking Energy Consumption in Indian Data Centers

September 03, 2010

Dale Sartor & Kevin Kircher, Lawrence Berkeley Nation Laboratory

Satish Kumar & Madhav Kamath, USAID ECO-III Project

Acknowledgements
The authors thank NASSCOM for their efforts in coordinating data acquisition, as well as the
staff of Hewlett Packard, Maruti, Intel, Texas Instruments, and APC for kindly sharing their
facility data.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................................... 2
Executive Summary....................................................................................................................................... 4
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 5
Process and Metrics ...................................................................................................................................... 5
Results ........................................................................................................................................................... 7
Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................. 17
References .................................................................................................................................................. 18

Executive Summary
Data centers constitute a large and rapidly growing sector of energy use. By one estimate, data
centers consumed 0.8% of the worlds electricity in 2005, at an aggregate cost of 7.2 billion USD
and growing by 16% each year. [1] Although the net consumption of data centers in India has yet
to be quantified, the IT-heavy nature of the countrys economy suggests relative data center
energy consumption in India may exceed the global average.
As a first step toward improving the energy performance of data centers, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory has compiled a database of US data centers. In order to augment this
database, and to establish a basis for comparing US and Indian data center performance, the
USAID ECO-III project personnel solicited energy data from Indian IT companies. This paper
presents the US and Indian data, and compares the two countries data center energy
performance.
While the data set is not statistically representative of US or Indian data centers in general, it
does provide some interesting suggestions:

The Indian data centers reported performed in the midrange of their US counterparts,
perhaps slightly better on average.

There was a range of performance just like in the US, indicting opportunities for
improved efficiency; however that range was tighter in the Indian sample set.

Introduction
Data centers constitute a large and rapidly growing sector of energy use. By one estimate, data
centers consumed 0.8% of the worlds electricity in 2005, at an aggregate cost of 7.2 billion
USD. These figures are nearly double the estimates for 2000, indicating an annual growth rate of
16%. [1] Although the net consumption of data centers in India has yet to be quantified, the ITheavy nature of the countrys economy suggests relative data center energy consumption in India
exceeds the global average.
As a first step toward improving the energy performance of data centers, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory (LBNL) has compiled a database of US data centers. This database allows
data center operators to benchmark their facilities against their peers, and provides data on the
energy performance of the data center stock. Each data point represents one year of energy data
from one facility, and contains metrics indicating overall energy performance, energy intensity of
air management, cooling system efficiency, and performance of the electrical power chain. In
order to augment this database, and to establish a basis for comparing US and Indian data center
performance, the USAID ECO-III project office solicited energy data from Indian IT companies.
This paper presents the US and Indian data, and compares the two countries data center energy
performance.
It should be noted that of the companies contacted, only five responded. These five data points
do not constitute a statistically representative sample of Indian data center performance, and so
the results of this analysis should be taken as suggestions, rather than strongly supported
conclusions.

Process and Metrics

Data center information presented in this document was self-reported, using a template
developed by LBNL (available on the web at http://hightech.lbl.gov/benchmarkingguides/data.html) and distributed by the USAID ECO-III Project. Facilities staff at the
contributing companies reported the data detailed in Table 1. These data were then used to
calculate the metrics detailed in Table 2. The formulas for calculating these metrics, as well as
their physical significance, are presented alongside the results in the following section.

Table 1: Reported facility data.

ID
Data
General Data Center Data
dB1
Data Center Area (electrically active) (m2)
dB2
Data Center Location
dB3
Data Center Type
dB4
Year of Construction
Cooling
Average Cooling System Power Consumption
dC1
(kW)
dC2
Average Cooling Load (tons)
dC3
Installed Chiller Capacity (w/o backup) (tons)
dC4
Peak Chiller Load (tons)
dC5
Air Economizer Hours (full cooling) (hours)
dC6
Water Economizer Hours (full cooling) (hours)
Electrical Power Chain
dP1
UPS Peak Load (kW)
dP2
UPS Load Capacity (kW)
dP3
dP4
dP5
dP6

ID
Data
Data Center Energy Data
dE1
Total Electrical Energy Use (kWh)
dE2
IT Electrical Energy Use (kWh)
dE3
HVAC Electrical Energy Use (kWh)
dE4
Total Fuel Energy Use (kWh)
dE5
Total District Steam Energy Use (kWh)
Total District Chilled Water Energy Use
dE6
(kWh)
Air Management
dA1
Supply Air Temperature (C)
dA2
Return Air Temperature (C)
dA3
Supply Air Relative Humidity (%)
dA4
Return Air Relative Humidity (%)
dA5
Rack Inlet Mean Temperature (C)
dA6
Rack Outlet Mean Temperature (C)
dA7
Total Fan Power (Supply and Return) (W)
Total Fan Airflow rate (Supply and Return)
dA8
(m3/s)

UPS Input Power (kW)

UPS Output Power (kW)
Average IT or Server Power (kW)
Average Lighting Power (kW)

Table 2: Calculated benchmarking metrics.

ID
B1
B2
B3
A1
A2
A3
A4
C1
C2
C3
C4
P1
P2
P3
P4

Name
Overall Data Center Performance Metrics
Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE)
Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)
HVAC System Effectiveness
Air Management Metrics
Temperature Range
Humidity Range
Return Temperature Index
Airflow Efficiency
Cooling Metrics
Cooling System Efficiency
Cooling System Sizing Factor
Air Economizer Utilization Factor
Water Economizer Utilization Factor
Electrical Power Chain Metrics
UPS Load Factor
UPS Efficiency
IT Equipment Load Density
Lighting Power Density

Unit
C
%
%
W/m3/sec
kW/ton
%
%
%
%
W/sqm
W/sqm

Results
In this section, we present the US and Indian data center metrics, and briefly discuss their
calculation and significance. Please see Tables 1 and 2 for definitions of the variables. Facilities
1 through 26 are US data centers, while 27 through 31 are the five Indian data centers currently
on record. All data is presented anonymously.
In some cases, data is missing from a significant portion of the data centers on file. These gaps
represent data that were either unreported or misreported.
Data Center End-Use Breakdown
This chart shows the end-uses of data center energy, broken into IT end-uses, HVAC, non-IT
electrical end-uses, and other. Ideally all or most of the energy goes to the IT load. In reality the
portion varies in the US data set from about one third to about three quarters. Some newer data
centers are being designed with 90+% of the power going to IT, but these high performances are
often associated with data centers in cool climates and not requiring high redundancy in their
infrastructure (e.g. 2N+). The variation in the India data (last 5 bars) is less, and the average is
slightly better (with over half the energy going to IT), but still with considerable room for
improvement. The portion of data center energy going to HVAC and electrical distribution
varies considerably in both countries, but the HVAC was always the second highest load.

B1: Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE)

This metric is the ratio of the IT equipment energy to the total data center energy use. The higher
the number, the better the infrastructure efficiency with the ideal being 1. The total data center
energy use is the sum of the electrical energy for IT, HVAC system, power distribution, lighting,
and any other form of energy use, like steam or chilled water. DCiE is calculated as follows:
B1 = dE2 / (dE1 + dE4 + dE5 + dE6)
As indicated above, the India data for DCiE is better and in a tighter range than for the US with
this limited sample set.

B2: Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)

PUE is the inverse of DCiE, the total energy divided by the IT energy. A lower PUE
(approaching 1) indicates a better performing facility. PUE is calculated as follows:
B2 = (dE1 + dE4 + dE5 + dE6) / dE2
PUE has recently been adopted by the US EPA, DOE, and several international organizations
(e.g. ASHRAE) as the preferred overall data center infrastructure performance metric. No
agreement has been reached on an overall metric including the computational efficiency. While
such a metric would be ideal, and would take into account the hardware efficiency and utilization
(data center hardware, e.g. servers, are often less than 10% utilized), efficiency varies by
application making such a rating very difficult.
The PUE graph dramatically illustrates the high variation in infrastructure efficiency as a
function of IT load. The blue portion of the graph represents the IT load, while the red portion
represents energy going to the infrastructure (to support the IT load). The infrastructure portion
ranges from under .5 of the IT load to over 2 times the IT load. Again the Indian data shows less
variation and a slightly higher average effectiveness.

B3: HVAC System Effectiveness

This metric focuses on the HVAC system and again relates it to the IT load. It is the ratio of the
IT equipment energy to the HVAC system energy. The HVAC system energy is the sum of the
electrical energy for cooling, reheat, fan movement, and any other HVAC energy use like steam
or chilled water. HVAC System Effectiveness is calculated as follows:
B3 = dE2 / (dE3 + dE4 + dE5 + dE6)
The higher the value, the more effective the HVAC is relative to the IT load. The data shows a
large variation in HVAC effectiveness in both countries, with a somewhat tighter range in India.

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A1: Temperature Range

This metric is the difference between return and supply air temperatures. The temperature range
is calculated as follows:
A1 = dA2 dA1
Typically the larger the difference in temperature and the warmer the supply temperature, the
more efficient the HVAC (lower fan energy and more efficient cooling). The graph illustrates
the raw data rather than the difference because not all sites reported both. Again higher supply
temperature (center #27 on India), and higher differences (centers 20, 21,& 22 in the
US) indicate good air management.

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A2: Humidity Range

This metric is the difference between return and supply relative humidity. The humidity range is
calculated as follows:
A2 = dA4 dA3
The graph represents the raw data rather than the difference because not all sites reported both.
Typically like temperature, the larger the difference the better. Many data centers have a
tighter control range (supply humidity) than necessary which often wastes energy.

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A4: Airflow Efficiency

This metric characterizes the overall efficiency of airflow systems in terms of the total fan power
required per unit of airflow. This metric provides an overall measure of how efficiently air is
moved through the data center, from the supply to the return, and takes into account low pressure
drop design as well as fan system efficiency. It should be noted that all of the Indian data for this
metric was either unreported or misreported, so only the US data (which is similarly sparse) is
included. Airflow efficiency is calculated as follows:
A4 = dA7 / dA8
The lower the watts the more efficient the system is at delivering the air.

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C1: Data Center Cooling System Efficiency

This metric characterizes the overall efficiency of the cooling system (including chillers, pumps,
and cooling towers) in terms of energy input per unit of cooling output (kW/ton). It is an average
value depicting average power of the cooling system with respect to the cooling load in the data
center. Data Center Cooling System Efficiency is calculated as follows:
C1 = dC1 / dC2
The lower the kW/ton the more efficient is the cooling system. The Indian data centers show
lower chiller plant efficiency (higher kW/ton). This may be caused by hot and humid conditions
(harder to dissipate the heat) and greater use of air cooled chillers rather than water cooled
(with a cooling tower).

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P1: UPS Load Factor

This metric is the ratio of the peak load of the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to the design
value of its capacity. This provides a measure of the UPS system over-sizing and redundancy.
UPS Load Factor is calculated as follows:
P1 = dP1 / dP2
From an efficiency standpoint, more highly loaded UPSs tend to be more efficient although there
are many factors, and the Indian data didnt support that conclusion.

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P2: UPS System Efficiency

This metric is the ratio of the UPS output power to the UPS input power, presented as a
percentage. The UPS efficiency varies depending on its load factor. UPS System Efficiency is
calculated as follows:
P2 = (dP4 / dP3) x 100
The Indian data center demonstrate higher UPS efficiency than their US counterparts.

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P3: IT or Server Load Density

This metric is the ratio of the average IT or server power to the electrically active data center
area. This metric provides a measure of the power consumed by the servers. IT Load Density is
calculated as follows, with the factor of 1,000 converting kW to W:
P3 = (dP5 / dB1) x 1000
This metric is energy density and typically does not relate to efficiency. Indian data centers have
a very large range of density, but does not appear to be any more or less dense the benchmarked
US centers.

Conclusions
Once again, the data set analyzed herein is quite small, and should not be taken as statistically
representative of Indian data centers in general. However, preliminary analysis suggests the
following points:

The Indian data centers reported performed in the midrange of their US counterparts,
perhaps slightly better on average.

There was a range of performance just like in the US, indicting opportunities for
improved efficiency; however that range was tighter in the Indian sample set.
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For further information regarding the data center benchmarking process and potential efficiencyimproving actions, or to participate, please visit http://hightech.lbl.gov/benchmarkingguides/data.html .

References
1. Koomey, Jonathan. 2007. Estimating total power consumption by servers in the U.S. and the
world. Oakland, CA: Analytics Press. February 15. (http://enterprise.amd.com/us-en/AMDBusiness/Technology-Home/Power-Management.aspx)

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