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The Greening of IT
156 How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment

5 percent to 12 percent of all the energy consumed in data centers. This esti-
mate is from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Web site on data centers:
http://hightech.lbl.gov/DCTraining/emerging.html. Manufacturer specifica-
tions can differ widely from measured results because of differences in load-
ing conditions and test procedures. There can also be differences between
efficiencies measured under reference conditions and under in-use conditions
in data centers. Work is underway to estimate how much energy could
be saved by improving UPS efficiency, developing standardized efficiency
testing protocols, measuring the efficiencies of UPSs across a range of load
conditions, and proposing efficiency metrics for use by the marketplace in
comparing units for purchase.

Chapter Summary and Conclusions

The following conclusions can be drawn from this chapter’s discussion on
green IT for energy utilities:

■ Energy utilities have an important role in encouraging data center energy ptg
efficiency.
■ Energy utilities have a significant incentive to encourage energy effi-
ciency for both their own IT and customer IT to avoid building addi-
tional power-generation plants to meet an increasing power demand.
This is due to both the significant expense and the social aspects of build-
ing new power plants.
■ Rate cases from electric utilities provide an important way for the utility
to encourage data center energy efficiencies.
■ Case studies as described in this chapter confirm the importance of green
IT strategies for electric utilities.