DOE

FINAL PROPOSAL

     Proposal to the United States Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu  

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Problem Statement

Upwards of 2% of our nation’s power is consumed by our nation’s data centers, computer rooms, and engineering spaces. The EPA estimates that annual growth in data center energy consumption is roughly 16%. Proven energy efficiency solutions exist for data centers that dramatically improve efficiency of power usage. However, adoption rate is abysmal. Solutions have existed for over 5 years, but are not adopted due to risk aversion, misunderstanding or lack of corporate prioritization. Decisions are based on a limited knowledge of the long term ROI potential. A small percentage of utility districts offer energy reduction rebate programs.These programs are unable to make significant headway in getting businesses to change their energy use habits due to the lack of a common national framework.

Opportunity Statement

The potential for data center energy efficiency improvement is as much as 80%. This target is too significant to ignore. With appropriate funding and focus we can reduce our nation’s power consumption over the next three years by upwards of 1% and in so doing also limit or even halt our long-term energy consumption growth. As corporations engage this program they will purchase capital assets, make capital improvements to their facilities, and push vendor companies to develop new more efficient solutions. Through this program we can improve the economy, strengthen our “green tech” industries and reduce our dependence on foreign energy.

Proposal

Data Center Pulse, an organization of independent, vendor neutral, national and global data center owners is proposing the creation of a partnership with the US Federal Government. Through this partnership a national standardized power efficiency rebate program related to data centers and other compute related facilities would be created. The program development and leadership would come from Data Center Pulse, with rebate funding support from a combination of the federal government and utilities.

There is no better time than the present for the U.S. Government to take a leadership role in combination with Data Center Pulse to support a nationwide compute infrastructure power efficiency improvement program in cooperation with utilities, utility districts, and business. With Data Center Pulse providing program leadership and management you have the strength of nearly 1,000 data center owners and operators with years of experience and expertise in this space providing a sounding board and “feet on the street” for the entire community of users and partners to leverage. By leveraging the Data Center Pulse end-user community, program development and execution can be accelerated and end-user adoption dramatically increased.

FEEDBACK

     feedback@datacenterpulse.org