Data Center Water Usage Effectiveness

The most frequent example of this happens when operators seeking to reduce power consumption switch from computer room air conditioning crac systems to evaporative cooling systems.

Data center water usage effectiveness.

Traditionally data centers have focused on power usage effectiveness pue to cool facilities however we re seeing water usage effectiveness wue become a critically important metric as. Where no water is used for cooling the wue has a value of 0. Striking a balance with resource consumption in your data center facility could prove to be a herculean task. Wue is still a fairly new sustainability metric a natural extension of pue power usage effectiveness the most used metric related to data center energy efficiency.

The wue is a metric that divides the annual water usage by the it power. The units of wue are liters kilowatt hour l kwh. To water use in processes due to site operations and source energy generation similar to scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas ghg emissions2. So an effective water conservation plan should be adopted in data center facilities to ensure fair usage of this natural resource which is more precious than electricity.

The new water usage effectiveness wue metric combined with the pue and carbon usage effectiveness cue metrics enables data center operators to quickly assess the water energy and carbon sustainability aspects of their data centers compare the results and determine if any energy efficiency and or sustainability improvements need. How does it measure water usage effectiveness. It equipment energy annual water usage wue 1. Wue is simply defined as annual site water usage divided by it energy usage.

At most data centers there is a trade off between water and energy consumption.