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EPA Reaches Goal On Data Center Study
1sockchuck writes "After initially struggling in its effort to find data center operators willing to share data about their energy usage, the EPA extended the program by a month and has managed to recruit 215 facilities to participate in its program to help the government develop an Energy Star program for data centers. An EPA official says there are no plans to regulate the data center industry."
...yet.
Which is political shorthand for "you can bet your ass we'll be pushing for restrictions on data center power usage once the numbers come in".
If I was from Control, your data centers would already be throttled
If you were from Control, your data centers would already be throttled
Neither of our data centers are throttled, so obviously I'm not from Control.
I for one seriously doubt that my flux-capacitor centric data center design will be receiving its Energy Star certification any time soon.
my insights may be modded Funny, but at least some of my jokes are modded Insightful
I share your natural skepticism of public officials' pronouncements, but there is another factor: it is in the data centers' own best interest to analyze their energy use, since it's their biggest cost by far. Since there's a relatively rapid turnover in gear (compared to, say, power plants), the data centers are going to be very interested in energy use best practices and best gear even without a government mandate. And so are the manufacturers of said gear--they also have a fairly short product cycle. They might be a little cranky if the government pushes them, but their customers are already pushing them by looking at instructions/watt as well as instructions/second.
udin
This is one of those areas that the government does NOT need to meddle. Price and market will fix it. period. go. ahead. argue. now.
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Well duh!! None of the data center operators opened their email.
The EPA like any government bureaucracy has several components, many of which don't necessarily fall into the realm of highly monitored policy. The Energy Star program has existed since 1992 and pretty much operates under the radar. The fact that the EPA runs the Energy Star program that certifies various components and processes for energy efficiency doesn't mean that there is a coordinated government policy at the EPA to monitor and regulate these components and processes. It is just a small office that handles the certifications. We are talking about a $7 billion/yr agency. Try not to put too much focus on the small Energy Star office which has had its budget cut by the Bush Administration.
The government, with access to regulated utility records, knows exactly how much power a datacenter is using. And the energy star program applied for years to other commercial buildings has resulted in no federal mandates. You're basically pushing a line of FUD for... well no one benefits really. Hopefully you at least get a good Funny mod rating for your efforts to stunt the development of useful data to help the industry.
The government acting as a neutral party to collect useful data is hardly meddling. Next you'll decide to rant about them meddling in pharmaceuticals by funding cancer research. The facts of the matter are that datacenter energy use is very poorly understood by owners and considered a negligible cost of the business. When benchmarked, datacenter efficiency has been found to vary by over a factor of two between facilities. Owners don't really know what is efficient - high bills are just part of the business, and competitors aren't willing to share good data on the subject. Hence the need for the government to provide some benchmarks, similar to the flawed, but better than nothing, mpg ratings for cars.
Question: How has the government used the enormous database of commercial building power usage, which is still larger in aggregate than data centers? Other than providing a useful tool for setting design goals, what nefarious federal regulations have been spawned by this evil data collection, analysis, and presentation?
DEA?
From my (also very limited) understanding of the DEA, they don't have a lot to do with energy usage and emissions controls.
Maybe in the future the other DEA will be the Data Enforcement Administration and BURN data centers to the ground which commit, or allow people to commit DATA-CRIME.
Oh, remember the days when the DEA used to put out fires.