S'pore to develop green data center benchmark

SINGAPORE--The government has initiated a study to gain insights into the energy consumption of data centers located in the country, as well as establish a baseline to assess the energy and environmental performance of such facilities.

Commissioned by the National Environment Agency and supported by local ICT regulator the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), the study will be conducted by Hewlett-Packard, the IT vendor announced in a statement Friday.

According to HP, the study will look at energy usage patterns and operating conditions of data centers, evaluate current green data center metrics, and identify areas for standardization and other data center issues. HP experts specialized in critical facilities services will also guide the development of standards, policies and programs to improve datacenter energy efficiency, the company said.

The initiative is parked under the Energy Efficiency Programme Office (E2PO), led by NEA, and is part of the government's overall efforts to encourage energy efficiency in the country.

To equip data centers to go green, the IDA announced in March 2010 the Green Data Centre Standard. An IDA official also said in June that the country was working on the creation of isolated environments that allow businesses to testbed energy-efficient measures for their data centers.

The Green Data Centre Standard is currently under development by the IT Standards Committee (ITSC), a body that promotes and facilitates national infocomm standardization programmes.

Ronnie Lee, co-chair of the Green Data Centre Standard Work Group under the ITSC, said in the statement the study will be "useful in identifying appropriate metrics to adopt for the measurement of datacenter energy efficiency in Singapore".