Data Center Water Usage Effectiveness

Wue is still a fairly new sustainability metric a natural extension of pue power usage effectiveness the most used metric related to data center energy efficiency.

Data center water usage effectiveness.

To water use in processes due to site operations and source energy generation similar to scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas ghg emissions2. The wue is a metric that divides the annual water usage by the it power. Wue water usage effectiveness is a metric developed by the green grid to help data centers measure how much water a facility uses for cooling and other building needs. Striking a balance with resource consumption in your data center facility could prove to be a herculean task.

Traditionally data centers have focused on power usage effectiveness pue to cool facilities however we re seeing water usage effectiveness wue become a critically important metric as. The most frequent example of this happens when operators seeking to reduce power consumption switch from computer room air conditioning crac systems to evaporative cooling systems. So an effective water conservation plan should be adopted in data center facilities to ensure fair usage of this natural resource which is more precious than electricity. The units of wue are liters kilowatt hour l kwh.

At most data centers there is a trade off between water and energy consumption. The new water usage effectiveness wue metric combined with the pue and carbon usage effectiveness cue metrics enables data center operators to quickly assess the water energy and carbon sustainability aspects of their data centers compare the results and determine if any energy efficiency and or sustainability improvements need. It equipment energy annual water usage wue 1. Water usage effectiveness wue the metric for water usage in the data center is defined at a high level as.

The units are liters kwh.