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Various bloggers on this site have touched on the concept of Power Usage Effectiveness, or PUE (such as here and here), and lots has been written on the topic under the auspices of The Green Grid, which developed the metric, and elsewhere. But now you can get pretty much all the information you need about PUE in one source: the new book, PUE™: A Comprehensive Examination of the Metric.
PUE measures the relationship between the total energy consumed in a data center and the energy consumed by IT equipment. In short, it measures how much energy is going to something other than powering IT equipment – because the IT equipment, after all, is what a data center is really all about. Since PUE is normalized to IT energy consumption, PUE is intended to provide guidance for and insight into the design efficiency of all power and cooling architectures, the deployment of equipment within those architectures, and the day-to-day operation of that equipment.
Since its original publication in 2007, the PUE metric has been used by organizations around the globe to measure the effectiveness of their data center power and cooling infrastructure. It’s been instrumental in helping data center owners and operators better understand and improve the energy efficiency of their existing data centers, as well as helping them make better decisions on new data center deployments.
Over time, The Green Grid has continued to refine the metric’s measurement methodology with collaborative industry feedback. PUE™: A Comprehensive Examination of the Metric consolidates all previously published material related to PUE and includes some new material. The new material includes a definition of partial PUE, which is useful to assess efficiency of either modular pieces of a data center or containerized data centers, and international agreements on the use of source energy, which provides an equitable way to measure PUE in instances where non-electrical energy is used.
The book provides a high level description of the concepts surrounding PUE, plus in-depth application knowledge and resources for folks who are implementing, reporting and analyzing data center metrics. It also includes detailed information on procedures for calculating, reporting and analyzing PUE measurements, plus quick references to other resources in print and online.
Whether a novice or expert in the IT industry, a CIO or facility planner, IT equipment manufacturer or energy auditor, the book is an essential guide for all who implement, report on and make decisions based on data center energy use metrics.
You can get the book through ASHRAE’s web site and at any of the group’s various conferences. It’s available as a PDF for instant download or in printed format, for $59 ($50 for ASHRAE members). If your company is a member of The Green Grid (as is Schneider Electric) you can get it for free by clicking here. (If you’re not sure, click here for a member list.)