Growing green

Everywhere you look there is a tagline about ‘going green’. Al Gore brought the climate change issue to the masses in the film An Inconvenient Truth and then many of the world’s leading musicians did their bit to raise awareness in the series of Live Earth concerts.

For those of us in the power quality business, going green can mean addressing the spiralling energy costs and the increasing problem of obtaining enough power.

More recently, we’ve heard about the ‘green shoots’ of a forthcoming economic recovery. For the electrical industry, it’s much more tangible and may be best rephrased at the current time as ‘growing green’.

No longer a fringe concept, ‘engineering green’ is now a crucial business and economic issue with multiple opportunities for the electrical sector.

Environmentally friendly products help organisations become more efficient and drive significant cost savings. At the same time, more businesses and institutions are incorporating green technologies and design methods into new facilities and expansion projects.

Take data centres, for example, which typically consume 2.5 kW of power for every kW of power actually used for computing. This ratio, which in this case is 2.5:1, is known as power utilisation effectiveness (PUE). Most new data centres are being designed to reduce the PUE ratio down to around 1.6. Actual data centre power ratings can range from 500 kW to more than 10 MW.

While more efficient computing methods and equipment are the obvious ways to reduce energy consumption, there are some big reductions to be made in the facilities that house and power the IT equipment.

The biggest non-IT equipment energy consumers are the cooling systems required to cool the IT equipment and the UPS systems required to provide reliable 24/7 power. Focusing on better utilising server capacity through server virtualisation and increasing cooling and power systems efficiencies are the main ways to reduce consumption.

In many large enterprises, energy costs are higher than the IT equipment costs. So apart from being seen to be green and reducing their carbon footprint, large organisations can save considerable costs by just increasing their data centre energy efficiency by a single percentage point.

While some institutions can meet their green goals through specific solutions implemented on a project basis, for others, sustainability is a long-term proposition, requiring broader, strategic consultation.

While superior green building products are important to this effort, so is a strategic range of solutions including:

• Sustainable sites: Opportunities exist to reduce a building’s footprint by combining equipment into space-saving electrical structures, shrinking electrical room layouts by as much as 40%. Managing lighting also reduces night-time lighting pollution.
• Energy and atmosphere: Significant opportunities exist in energy-efficient equipment, control and measurement of energy-consuming equipment and on-site renewable energy. Examples include energy-efficient lighting, lighting control, variable speed drives, power metering, sub-metering and switchgear equipment necessary to interconnect photovoltaics.
• Materials and resources: The main credit point to be gained here is in an effective construction waste management program.
• Indoor environment quality: Lighting is the single largest energy user in office buildings at nearly 30% and lighting controls can turn lights down or off through daylight harvesting capabilities. Another area is interconnection of variable frequency drives with ventilation systems.

Collaborative, long-term relationships also offer an ideal opportunity to develop these strategic solutions that will result in significant cost savings and enhanced reputations among key stakeholders. For the electrical industry, it means growing your business with an eye on the green factor from today onwards.

Lou Rosen is Managing Director of Eaton Industries in Australia and New Zealand, responsible for the Power Distribution, Power Quality and Telecom businesses including 13 sales and service branches and three manufacturing operations. Rosen has over 20 years of experience in the electrical industry in engineering, operations, marketing, sales and general management assignments. He holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA.