By Enterprise Innovation Editors | Mar 14, 2011

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Global solutions provider Hewlett-Packard has been chosen by Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) to run a benchmarking study that will give insights to the energy performance of the city-state’s data centers.

Besides traditional intensive energy consumers like buildings and transportation, data centers are also recognised as heavy users of energy, according to NEA. With growing demand for information and communications technology, data centers are becoming a significant source of energy consumption for corporations in Singapore, presenting a golden opportunity for energy cost reductions.

The benchmarking study is commissioned by the NEA and supported by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). It is an initiative of the Energy Efficiency Programme Office (E2PO), and will ascertain the energy usage patterns and operating conditions of local data centers, evaluate current industry metrics, and identify areas for standardization and other data center issues.

HP Critical Facilities Services professionals will guide the development of standards, policies, and programs to improve data center energy efficiency. The benchmark assessments will focus on:
— Calculating baseline energy consumption and green-house gas emission rates;
— Identifying mechanical, electrical and operational issues that lower energy efficiency;
— Providing recommendations and actions to improve efficiency.

Organizations across the country have been invited to participate in a NEA-sponsored energy audit of their data centers. The audit will leave them with valuable recommendations on how to optimize energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption costs in their specific operations.

"NEA wants to ensure that Singapore data centers consume less power and lower their carbon footprint,” said Kelly Tan, Vice President & Managing Director, HP Singapore. “HP has extensive experience in thousands of data center projects and manages over 200 data centers today. HP Critical Facilities Services professionals also bring proven expertise in a wide range of data center planning, design and operational support for next-generation, energy-efficient data centers. The results attained from this project can facilitate the establishment of benchmarks that will offer important guidance on improving data center efficiency in Singapore.”

The Singapore Green Data Center Standard is currently under development by the IT Standards Committee (ITSC), a body formed to promote and facilitate national infocomm standardization programmes.

”The study will be useful in identifying appropriate metrics to adopt for the measurement of data center energy efficiency in Singapore,” said Dr Ronnie Lee, co-chair of the Green Data Center Standard Work Group under the ITSC.

In the future, the standards and policies developed through this benchmarking project will be available to the broader IT industry as a tool to drive data center efficiency for all organizations in Singapore.