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Emerson Blog Floats Idea: New Metric For Water Use Measurement In Data Center Industry?

July 07, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

In his new post on Emerson’s Real Efficiency blog, Jack Pouchet, Director of Energy Initiatives for Emerson Network Power, is calling for the data center industry to formulate a new metric measuring data center water use.

This water usage effectiveness (WUE) metric or Water Systems Productivity (WSP) metric would help the industry consider the amount of water used in data center cooling and facilitate initiatives to reduce this amount.

Noting that many people speculate that water will be "the next oil" Pouchet said, "Simply put, for a data center, take useful work or even a proxy for useful work such as Emerson’s proposed Compute Units Per Second and divide that by the amount of water used during the observation period. Water will most be likely measured in units, with 1 unit equal to an acre/foot. It’s a measure often used in the residential/commercial real estate sector – think of it as the amount of water required to flood one acre to the depth of one foot. Of course, gallons/liters work just fine if you choose.

"This Water Systems Productivity metric would ideally be reported monthly along with all your other productivity and efficiency metrics. Once we start to measure and report water utilization, we will quickly realize that simply flowing more cooling water in order to "economize" may not always be the best answer. Now we will be able to have a meaningful tool to determine the ideal mix between dry-coolers, CW plants, and free-flow water-cooled systems, etc. versus the increased energy used with alternative solutions."