Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Data Centers and the Smart Grid

Guest post: Clemens Pfeiffer, Chief Technology Officer, Power Assure

The Smart Grid will bring about many changes, and data centers will not be exempt as they consume and waste an enormous amount of electricity. In the U.S., data centers consumed 61 billion kilowatt-hours or 1.5 percent of the nation’s total electricity in 2006, according to an August 2007 study by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That is twice what was consumed just six years earlier, and the EPA forecasted data center power consumption to double again from 2006 to 2012.