I don’t want much.

My early conversations at Grid-Interop this week have been driven by The Green Grid, and the discussions they have been having.

The Green Grid does not refer to the power grid, but to grid computing. In essence, the Green Grid is trying to solve the problems of reliability and efficiency in data centers. Data centers consume large amounts of power and convert it business process and heat. Green Grid operators want to understand the reliability of their power source, they want to know how well the building systems will be able to dissipate the heat, but the only thing they want to manage is the business processes.

Last night I had dinner with Ken Uhlman. Ken has been working on the Green Grid for the last year or so, and is passionate when describing the power distribution and power quality management. Ken has seen many of the same problems I have while working with oBIX. Many of the best engineers are detail oriented and love their work. They love their work so much they want to share it with others, They want to share not only how well their systems work, but all of the details about how they work.

Extraneous details are the enemies of interoperability. Extraneous details vary from implementation to implementation. Extraneous details lead to lock-in.

More importantly, extraneous details increase complexity. Complex systems are difficult for people from a different domain to use. If the complexity is too daunting, people just won’t try it.

So Ken and I were discussing a variety of issues when we came up to the crux. There are five elements of information that the data center needs from its electrical systems.

• What’s my current burn rate, i.e., how much energy am I using NOW?
• What’s my current price?
• What quality of power am I receiving now (may be a complex data type)
• What is the probability of some sort of failure now and for the near future?
• ( variant of 2) What predictions for price do you have in the near future?

With that information, and no others, the Green Grid would get the information that it needs.

For internal power systems, (breakers, UPS, generators) he suggested one more feature, for whether a service order has been acknowledged after a fault. Possibly a similar feature with estimated repair time could be added to the external feed—but I wouldn’t wait to get it. The first 5 are enough.

One of my visions is a building agent, enterprise aware, choreographing building systems, and getting input from the grid. The inputs Ken has described would be all I need to come from the grid. With that information, and no more, buildings could be responsive to conditions on the power grid.

See, I don’t want much.

EnergyStar Systems and Data Centers

Data centers consume huge amounts of electricity, much of it wasted. Data centers convert electricity to heat, so all energy used for computing is paired with a similar load for heat removal. Rethinking data centers is a good way to make a strong impact on energy usage in a hurry.

All computers use direct current (DC) to actually run. So does most consumer electronics. That little brick, or wall wart on the power cord transforms power from the alternating current (AC) of the power grid to DC to be used by the computer. In most desktop computers and servers, that “brick” is internal to the computer. Improving this process is straight-forward, and does not require any fundamental re-engineering of the computers.

Recently I was reading that the EPA is proposing higher efficiency standards for power conversion efficiency in computer systems. Most systems today still have not met the current version of these standards, called EnergyStar. What caught my eye was how much power is wasted even in today’s EnergyStar compliant systems. The numbers are so large that they make the case for re-thinking power systems for data centers far stronger than I had thought.

EnergyStar standards require power supplies are that no more than 80% efficient or better. This means that to be compliant, no more than 20% of the A/C power coming to your data center computer be converted to heat and lost before it even gets to the computing circuitry. This lost power is converted to heat before it ever gets to support actual computing.

This increases the arguments for Direct Current (DC) data centers. DC Data Centers convert Alternating Current (AC) power to DC before it is distributed to the servers. Telecommunications has longed used DC distribution for its big racks. There are several processes that can be improved by re-thinking power distribution in data centers around the principle of DC distribution.

All of that power lost by conversion is today heat lost in the data center. That heat must then be removed to keep the computing equipment sufficiently cool. Air conditioning is one of the most significant costs of a operating a data center. Many estimate that it takes up to 1.7 times as much energy to remove heat from conditioned space as the initial energy that generated the heat.

By simple moving the AC/DC conversion outside of the conditioned space of the data center, 20%-40% of the heat is moved out of the data center where it will not need to be air conditioned away.

Many reputable companies sell data center batteries to support uninterrupted power. These usually have AC converted to DC to charge batteries, with the same losses as above. The servers run off batteries. The batteries supply DC, which is converted to AC (5-15% loss of power as heat) to support the AC servers. The power supplies in the servers then convert the AC to DC (as above, with loss of power and generation of heat).

When people discuss the efficiency of this process, they usually describe the efficiency of the battery storage as the limiting factor. What the process above shows, however, that as much as half of the power stored may be lost as heat though the double conversion before it ever gets used for computing.

In a DC data center, the batteries still supply DC power, but all of it goes directly to the servers. Not only does this generate less heat, but it can as much as double the effective efficiency and life of the batteries by removing the double conversion for the last yard of distribution.

This increase of efficiency comes with today’s technologies, without waiting on the perfection of any novel or exotic battery technology.

It is hard to use the waste heat from Air Conditioning. A large AC/DC transformer, however, concentrates the energy lost as heat into one place. It is easy to harvest heat from a single very hot location. I have even seen proposals for fueling a steam distillation chiller off waste heat from a transformer to provide supplemental air conditioning for a data center. You could run domestic hot water heating off the external transformer. I suppose you could even hook a Stirling engine to the transformer and light the building using the waste heat.

We do not have to wait for exotic technologies, although they will come. We need to re-think processes with an awareness of power at each step. Transactive pricing for energy will encourage us to do just that.

IT starts to think about Facilities

I had the pleasure of beginning a correspondence with Ken Uhlman through this blog, and of meeting Ken tonight. Ken is with Eaton (Power) in their Data Center group. Eaton is part of a group I had not been tracking before, The Green Grid™.

The Green Grid is a consortium seeking to lower the overall consumption of power in data centers. The organization is chartered to develop meaningful, platform-neutral standards, measurement methods, processes and new technologies to improve energy efficient performance of global data centers.

Readers know that I reach for phrases that get the message quickly, or in a different light when I can. (I alternate with long-winded opaque discussions to keep you on your toes.) Ken had two such phrases he was willing to share.

“Everything in the enterprise today is on the IT network, EXCEPT for Facilities, and when facilities goes down, that’s a problem.”

I have had conversations similar to this many times at UNC. Our remote stations lose connectivity if they rely exclusively on the central data center, especially after a few day outage, as happens during a Carolina Ice Storm, or after a Hurricane, or…I’d say pretty reliable every three years. When it does, the people who are impacted are the folks that Data Center is waiting on to re-create the utilities to get the network up. (That doesn’t matter, during emergencies, non-essential employees are to stay at home)

Ken relates the other question he likes to ask CIOs.

“Tell me about your data center automation strategy, and they espouse all their storage, network, and compute activities with HP, IBM, CISCO…,” and then I ask them, “tell me about your facility automation strategy that supports your IT automation strategy.”

Ken relates that this results in a deer in the headlight stare…I can tell Ken lives in the city. Out where I live, the deer in the headlights usually leap into your car.

Power, Power Quality, Power Back-Up, Power Management, Power QOS, and, dare I say it, 3^rd party Power Auditing loom large in thinking about facilities in the years ahead.

Tomorrow, I will meet more of the members of The Green Grid. I will report back later.