Google criticizes datacenter energy standards

Tuesday, 20 April 2010, 17:42 IST
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Bangalore: Search giant Google has called for changes to new U.S. rules on energy standards for datacenters to make them less prescriptive. Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President of Operations at Google, said in a blog post that the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers now includes datacenters in its Standard 90.1 building efficiency standard that defines energy efficiencies in building design. Hoelzle explained that setting energy standards for datacenters is important, but suggested that the precise rules should be less firm, and should include rules on what technology should be employed to ensure efficiencies, reports David Neal of BusinessGreen. "We believe that for datacenters, where the energy used to perform functions like cooling is easily measured, efficiency standards should be performance-based, not prescriptive," he said. "In other words, the standard should set the required efficiency without prescribing the specific technologies to accomplish that goal." Hoelzle added that the proposed standard "dictates" what type of cooling methods should be used, and often chooses the wrong method.