UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCYWASHINGTON, D.C. 20460
OFFICE OF
AIR AND RADIATION

July 27, 2016,®

Dear ENERGY STAR Computer Server Partner or Other Interested Stakeholder,
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) welcomes your input on the Draft 1 Version 3.0
ENERGY STAR specification for Computer Servers. EPA has reviewed and considered all stakeholder
feedback gathered during the two previous “offseason” server stakeholder meetings. The deadline toprovide comments on this Draft 1 specification is August 26, 2016.
The primary goals of this Draft 1 specification and supporting documents are to: 1) establish revised Idle
State power requirements and expand their scope to additional server types; 2) determine moreaggressive power supply efficiency requirements; and 3) gather feedback regarding the approach for
Active State power metrics and requirements to be developed for Draft 2. EPA will work in cooperation
with the European Commission throughout the revision process.
The following are some of the key elements of this Draft 1 specification:
Section 3.2: EPA proposes more stringent power supply efficiency requirements at83%/90%/94% and 91% for single output and 90%/92% 89% for multi-output power supplies, 80
Plus platinum equivalent.
Section 3.5: EPA states its intention to add Active State requirements to this specification and to
propose metrics and efficiency requirements in Draft 2. EPA also requests stakeholder feedbackon points key to adding this new metric.
Section 3.6: EPA proposes Idle State efficiency requirements for all one and two socket servers,
including blade, multi-node, and resilient categories where applicable. In addition to new baseallowances, the adder allowances in Table 5 have also been revised to reflect recent technology
improvements.
Section 3.10: EPA proposes lowering the Auxiliary Processing Accelerator (APA) maximum idle
state power requirement from 46 watts per APA to 30 watts per APA to reflect recent efficiency
improvements in the GPU market.

More details regarding EPA’s rationale for making the changes listed above are included in note boxes
throughout the specification. EPA is continuing to collaborate closely with stakeholders on how toaggregate SERT worklet scores across all product types on the market to allow fair comparison ofservers’ Active State performance, and intends to release a proposed approach on Active State efficiency
criteria in Draft 2.
Stakeholders are requested to provide comments on the Draft 1 specification no later thanAugust 26, 2016. Please send comments via e-mail to servers@energystar.gov. All comments received
will be posted to the ENERGY STAR Product Development website, unless the submitter specificallyrequests that his or her comments remain confidential.
On August 12, from 12-2pm U.S. Eastern Time, EPA will host a stakeholder webinar to present details
on Draft 1 Version 3.0 ENERGY STAR Computer Server specification and address stakeholder questions
and concerns. If you wish to attend this webinar, please register prior to the webinar by clicking here.

The exchange of ideas and information between EPA, industry, and other interested parties is critical to
the success of ENERGY STAR. Specifications and meeting materials will be posted on the ENERGYSTAR website. To track EPA’s progress with the revision of this specification, please visit the productdevelopment website at www.energystar.gov/revisedspecs and navigate to “Computer Servers.”
Please contact me at Hanson.Steven@epa.gov or 202-343-9836 or John Clinger atJohn.Clinger@icfi.com or 215-967-9407 with questions or concerns. For any other computer server
related questions, please contact servers@energystar.gov. Thank you for your continued support of theENERGY STAR program.
Sincerely,

Steven Hanson
Manager, ENERGY STAR for Data Center Products