# Presentation: 881971

## Leading Energy Efficiency in High Tech:PG&E’s Program & Service Portfolio

**Leading Energy Efficiency in High Tech:****PG&E’s Program & Service Portfolio**

- Mark Bramfitt, P.E. CSU Dominguez Hills

## Discussion Points

- What is driving the emphasis on energy efficiency in the Information Technology/Data Center/High Tech sector?
- What’s happening on the ground with PG&E, leading high tech companies, and utilities across the nation.
- What are the likely developments in the near term.
- A challenge: Leadership

## But First: Why Energy Efficiency?

- Customers expect/love the programs
- All customers benefit through lower rates
- PG&E benefits financially
- Energy efficiency products and services are the cornerstone of our commitment to environmental responsibility and quality

## 30 Years of Energy Efficiency Success

- Energy efficiency programs have helped keep per capita electricity consumption in California flat over the past 30 years
- PG&E’s programs alone have avoided the release of over 1 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere over the same period, equivalent to taking 8.6 million cars off the road for a year

**Notes:**
Note that the beginning of the divergence between California and national numbers is in mid-1970s, which was when California and PG&E instituted energy efficiency programs.

## Global-Leading Program

- PG&E’s Energy Efficiency Goals: 2006 through 2008

**Notes:**
The California Energy Action plan and CPUC leadership are driving PG&E’s ambitious 3-year energy efficiency goals.

Note that these are goals for each year, not cumulative – so the total for 3 years is over 600 MW!

The total three-year program budget is just under $1 billion, with more than half of the funding dedicated to customer incentive funds.

## PG&E’s Direct Market

- A total load of 400-500 MW (2.5% of total, compared to 1.2% nationally)
- “Enterprise” centers are known (stand-alone and co-location)
- “Corporate” centers are hidden in office buildings (and campuses!)
- “Closet” servers are invisible
- The key challenge for many data centers is space, cooling, and power supply constraints, in the face of...

**Notes:**
An authoritative study by Jonathon Koomey at Stanford University estimates that data center energy use represents 1.2% of electric energy use nationwide.  

PG&E’s definition of an “Enterprise” data center is one that is operated by web-based, financial services, high tech, and co-location companies.  These centers can be stand-alone, or part of a campus environment.  Loads are in the tens of mW, with some individual centers approaching 100 mW. For some of these customers, energy use is second only to employee costs.

The growth rate for enterprise data centers is often 20, 30, 40, or 50 percent annually!  Concentrations are found in California, the Pacific Northwest, Texas and Arizona, Chicago, and the NY Metro area.

Corporate data centers tend to be smaller (5 to 20 thousand square feet) and are usually part of an office complex.  Growth rates are usually some low multiple of GDP – say up to 10% annually.

“Closet” servers (a PG&E-coined term!) are those serving small businesses – everything from doctors offices to wine distributors.  The equipment is often located at the end of the hall in the closet marked “telecom”. This equipment is often not served by dedicated cooling systems, though these customers often end up installing dedicated package HVAC units to keep their systems cool.

Remember that globally, less than a fifth of the population is currently accessing IT services.

Our analogy to the space/cooling/power issue is that data center operators are finding it impossible to fit one more pizza box into their data center “oven”.  

New data centers have construction costs exceeding $1000 per square foot, and generally take several years to site and construct.

## ...Intense Growth Rates...

- IT workload growth is multiples of GDP for most companies, and probably for educational institutions as well.
- Growth can be even higher for certain industries (like high performance computing centers for research)
- Everyone is facing huge growth rates in data storage

**Notes:**
Data storage growth rates are driven by a multiplicity of factors, including new financial rules such as Sarbannes-Oxley.  Our customers report up to 100% annual growth rates, and we are examining energy efficiency opportunities in this area.

## PG&E Data Center Offerings pre-2006

- Audits, incentives that addressed cooling systems only:
- High-efficiency equipment (chillers, pumps, fans, etc.)
- Air- and water-side economizers
- VFD’s
- What we were missing:
- Anything having to do with operations “inside the white room”

**Notes:**
Before PG&E adopted a targeted market approach, our programs often touched only a portion of the potential for a given customer type.  For data centers, we were really good at working with customers on cooling equipment.

There is lots of energy efficiency potential in cooling systems for data centers, especially related to air-side and water-side economizers, which together can provide as many as 6000 hours of “free” cooling in coastal areas of northern California.

## What We Were Missing

**Energy use in a high-performance data center (LBNL/PG&E Study)**

**Notes:**
This usage split is from the best data center surveyed in a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in a study underwritten by PG&E. In many data centers less than half of the energy supplied to the center is used by the IT equipment (the blue and yellow segments would be reversed).  
Key technical point: removing heat load in the data center results in AC system savings.  In England we would call this a “knock-on” effect; in the US a “two-fer”.

## New Initiatives in 2006

- Incentives for energy-efficient computing equipment (Rip & Replace only)
- Incentives for virtualization/consolidation
- Incentives for airflow control systems
- Incentives for high efficiency UPS and power distribution systems
- High quality technical services for cooling plants for existing and new data centers

**Notes:**
Yes, financial incentives take the form of a check written to the customer.  Key program design is that customers must apply before undertaking projects; these are “incentives”, not “rebates”.

## New/Coming in 2007

- Focus and incentives on efficient data storage technologies (just announced: MAID)
- Retro-commissioning program for airflow management
- Extension of 80+ program to data center computing equipment
- Rebates for PC management software (Now)
- Incentives for conversion to thin-client systems

**Notes:**
We are anxiously awaiting the results of an industry-led effort to develop the equivalent of miles-per-gallon ratings for servers and other IT equipment, which in turn PG&E will use to provide incentives for premium efficiency equipment for both replacement and new purchase installations.

We are working with the data storage equipment industry to evaluate opportunities, and have already debuted incentives for Multiple Array of Idle Disk systems.

There are six to ten best practices for managing airflow in data centers, and we are developing a package of metering and monitoring systems that customers can install to measure energy savings from implementing the measures.

Power supplies are certainly a focus in the industry, and we will be extending the 80+ program to data center computing equipment.  This program pays incentives directly to manufacturers for using high-efficiency supplies in their equipment.

We are providing $15 rebates per seat license for PC network management software that ensures PCs go into power savings mode when not in use.

Several suppliers and customers are working with us to evaluate the energy efficiency benefits of moving to a thin client computing system in place of PC networks.

## Results & Utility Industry Leadership

- Industry agrees that a **third to a half** of data center energy use can be addressed through cost-effective, reliable energy efficient technologies and strategies
- PG&E announces formation of national utility coalition to extend program adoption.

**Notes:**
Intel, AMD, HP, VMWare, Sun et al are coming up to speed on utility programs, and are prepared to launch governmental relations initiatives to expand utility programs!

The coalition includes utilities from the Pacific Northwest, California, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, and Canada.  The intent is to drive early adoption of programs, and then extend them to the 84 utilities in the country that have energy efficiency program offerings.  The coalition is rapidly building as other utilities express interest.

## Where Should a Campus Start?

- Spec 80 Plus compliant PC and server purchases
- Spec LCD monitors that beat Energy Star standard
- Install PC Network Management Software
- Free cooling and airflow management best practices in existing data centers
- Virtualization/consolidation

## Predictions

- Near term winners:
- Widespread adoption of Virtualization 1.0 for computing and data storage
- Focus on efficient data storage technologies
- Equipment metrics place high emphasis on efficiency as part of performance
- Early adoption of Virtualization 2.0: IT load following and demand response.

**Notes:**
From what we see in the marketplace, we’re predicting where new advances in energy efficiency in IT/data centers will come from.

“Virtualization 1.0” (our term) allows customers to consolidate their IT equipment, generally on anywhere from a 5 to 1 to as high as 20 to 1 ratio.

“Virtualization 2.0” goes a step further, allowing IT managers to activate equipment to follow workload – putting unneeded equipment safely into power savings mode.

## Mid-term winners:
Evolutionary power conditioning, management, and delivery systems 
Virtualization 3.0: fully integrated, holistic data center power management
Long-term winners:
Backup cooling systems, demand management
Truly “green” data center designs

- Evolutionary power conditioning, management, and delivery systems
- Virtualization 3.0: fully integrated, holistic data center power management
- Long-term winners:
- Backup cooling systems, demand management
- Truly “green” data center designs

- Predictions

**Notes:**
There is lots of talk in the industry regarding power delivery strategies that avoid multiple voltage changes.  Each voltage transformation yields energy loss.

Virtualization 3.0 may have capabilities to control cooling systems based on IT workloads, and may feature ability to stage workloads based on power cost and availability.

Backup cooling systems would use thermal energy storage solutions to improve reliability, and allow IT and facility managers to move cooling load into off-peak hours.

A “truly green” data center would push the envelop – using all of the known strategies for maximizing energy efficiency, while maintaining or even improving reliability.

## The Challenge

- What does leadership in “Green IT” for UC and CSU look like?
- IT and facility operations staffs working together
- A multi-pronged approach to drive energy efficiency
- Leveraging funding opportunities like PG&E’s incentive programs

**Notes:**
PG&E recognizes that we have to build partnerships across this industry, with equipment manufacturers, customers, the utility industry, the regulatory community, and new players to drive success.  What role will you play?

## Take Aways

- Utility customers can benefit from Incentive Programs
- Energy efficiency programs have kept California per capita electricity consumption flat over 30 years
- Utility efficiency goals continue to increase
- IT workload growth is high especially in research environments
- Data storage is high and growing
- Incentives in place for IT and infrastructure improvements for new or existing data centers
- New incentives are being added
- Industry agrees that 1/3-1/2 of energy use can be addressed
- IT and facility staff must work together to solve the problem

**Notes:**
PG&E recognizes that we have to build partnerships across this industry, with equipment manufacturers, customers, the utility industry, the regulatory community, and new players to drive success.  What role will you play?

## More Information

**Visit **_[www.pge.com/hightech](http://www.pge.com/hightech)__ _
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