2014 Forum – The Green Grid China Team Projects: Introduction of Green Grade Assessing Approach and Space Usage Effectiveness (SpUE), a Data Center Sustainability Metric

07 October, 2014 | Presentation

Ben Tao, Intel David Wang, Teradata

Introduction of Green Grade Assessing Approach

The China Cloud Computing Promotion and Policy Forum, an affiliation of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, created the Green Grade Assessment for the Chinese data center industry. This assessment approach covers three dimensions: energy efficiency (i.e., Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)), technology of energy saving, and green management. Furthermore, additional credit will be given for initiative exploration or green building, etc. A data center is graded on a scale of A to AAAAA with AAAAA being the best and most efficient. This Assessment uses PUE as the grading basis. More importantly, it collects details of how a particular PUE number is achieved. More than 17 data centers have been graded using this assessment over the past two years, and more are expected to be graded this year.

Space Usage Effectiveness (SpUE): A Data Center Sustainability Metric

The Green Grid has developed a new metric to complement the series of metrics it has introduced in the past few years, which includes the widely adopted and accepted Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). The Green Grid proposes this new metric to address one of the most important challenges that data center owners face, space usage in data centers. The new Space Usage Effectiveness (SpUE) metric enables data center operators to quickly assess the space, energy, water, and carbon sustainability aspects of their data centers, compare the results, and determine if any resource efficiency and/or sustainability improvements can be made.