Obviously, reduced power consumption brings lower energy costs. Beyond the direct savings of buying less power, there are financial incentives from governmental agencies and power utilities that often improve the return-on-investment for energy efficiency projects.

But in order to take advantage of these programs, companies are required to measure and document energy efficiency gains.

IBM wanted to improve the efficiency of its data centers in New York. The initial focus was on the company’s Endicott and Poughkeepsie locations with 186,000 sq ft of data center space that provide for 7.6MW of IT load serving both internal IBM users and commercial hosting clients.

Program recommendations and incentives
In order to maximize the scope of the project with the limited capital funds available, IBM identified various state and utility programs that would pay significant incentives for server consolidation and virtualization projects planned in 2010 and 2011.

In New York, IBM can earn US$0.12/kWh saved through NYSERDA Industrial and Process Efficiency program (IPE) incentives for the projects in Endicott and Poughkeepsie. By providing such a meaningful difference in project payback periods, these incentives allow IBM to plan additional work over the course of the two-year project.

The IBM Poughkeepsie site has been an active participant in past NYSERDA programs and with the IPE program, funding is now available for data center improvement projects, not just facility infrastructure. Using this experience, IBM is developing a repeatable methodology to help clients with their own data center energy efficiency projects. 

Metrics and results
IBM designed the 2010 Enterprise Computing Model (ECM) project to reduce annual electric consumption.

In its Endicott and Poughkeepsie data centers, IBM targeted every server for potential virtualization and consolidation. By looking at the overall data center workload instead of using the typical application-by-application approach, the IBM team was able to identify and remove powered-off and under-utilized servers, resulting in significant power savings.

IBM used a fit-for-purpose methodology to determine the best target environment. As a result, 50% of existing servers were migrated to IBM System z mainframe servers.

As a final step, all unused servers and peripherals were decommissioned and unused floor space made available for other purposes.

IBM collaborated with Neuwing Energy Ventures to assist with design and implementation of the measurement and verification plan and to coordinate efforts with NYSERDA’s technical reviewer, energy consulting firm L&S Energy. The verification efforts consisted of circuit-level metering of IT electric load combined with energy reporting delivered by a state-of-the-art power usage effectiveness (PUE) tracking tool implemented by the IBM facilities team.

IBM’s implementation of the two-year project is progressing as planned with work nearly complete in Endicott and continuing in Poughkeepsie. The company estimates it will realize an annual energy savings in excess of 9m kWh upon project completion.

With NYSERDA IPE incentives of about US$1.085m offsetting the cost of these capital improvements, the payback of the project improves by over a year.

About NYSERDA

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is a public benefit corporation created in 1975 under Article 8, Title 9 of the State Public Authorities Law through the reconstitution of the New York State Atomic and Space Development Authority. NYSERDA’s earliest efforts focused solely on research and development with the goal of reducing the State’s petroleum consumption. Today, NYSERDA’s aim is to help New York meet its energy goals: reducing energy consumption, promoting the use of renewable energy sources, and protecting the environment.

Disclaimer: views expressed above are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of DatacenterDynamics