Data Centers In India: Initiative Summary

ENSURING GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS OF INDIAN IT SECTOR BY
IMPROVING ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF INDIAN DATA CENTERS

INTRODUCTION

Facilities for high-tech industries (cleanrooms and data centers) are very energy intensive, and operate continuously (24 x 7). These facilities generally consume many times the energy of a typical office building - as much as a hundred times more on a square-meter basis. High-tech facilities are experiencing significant growth in India, making this one of the fastest growing energy-use sectors and impacting electrical supply and distribution. To make situation even more acute, many data centers in India are working on 100% backup power (typically electricity produced by diesel generator sets) to satisfy power requirements that exceeds 10-20 MW. Both economic development and energy program goals can be served by initiatives that reduce energy costs for existing and prospective facilities, and mitigate the impact of high-tech development on electrical infrastructure. High tech facilities contain specialized and complex systems, yet numerous efficiency improvements are possible. Prior energy efficiency efforts have typically been limited to conventional building measures, leaving out the more energy intensive opportunities.

OBJECTIVES

1. Help create a public-private partnership to assist in market transformation and capacity building for energy efficiency in Indian IT/ITES infrastructure (cleanrooms and data centers), starting with data centers.
2. Transfer international best practices and benchmarks in the design, construction, operation and maintenance of data centers.

PLANNED TASK ACTIVITIES

1. 1) Walk-through two or three data center facilities in two cities including informal discussions with operations and maintenance (O&M) staff and designers
   
   a) Discuss measurement plan and benchmarking (using existing and new metering)
2. Meetings with Indian experts (integrated with walk-throughs)
3. Charrette-type meeting with key stakeholders, technology solutions provider, and integrators
4. In conjunction with local experts, prepare presentation material on energy efficiency in data centers tailored for India (overview of opportunities in data centers based on observations and discussions, sharing of best practices and lessons learned from international experience)
5. Concluding Workshop (for a wider audience) titled “Ensuring Global Competitiveness of Indian IT sector by Improving Energy Efficiency of Indian Data Centers”
6. Future activity includes developing a best practice manual under the public-private partnership.

KEY PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS

1. Project Partners: Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US Department of Energy, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)
2. Industry Partners: NASSCOM, IBM, Intel, HP, Network Appliances, Wipro Technologies
3. Implementing Projects: USAID ECO-III Project and Asia Pacific Partnership (APP)