The new features offer greater visibility into energy consumption and resources, as well as historical data analysis and detailed metrics to help organizations meet upcoming reporting requirements. This includes quickly, intuitively, and easily generating reports with integration features with third parties and data export. All of this can be done simply by pressing a button.
This is the result of three years of strategic investment and rigorous testing and development as part of the Green IT Program led by Schneider Electric’s CIO. Schneider Electric, a leader in digital transformation of energy management and automation, has announced the introduction of new automated sustainability reporting functions based on models within its award-winning Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software EcoStruxure IT. The launch follows three years of strategic investment, rigorous testing, and development within Schneider Electric’s Green IT Program, led by Schneider Electric’s CIO, Elizabeth Hackenson.
The new reporting functions combine 20 years of experience in sustainability, regulations, data centers, and software development with advanced Machine Learning. Customers will have access to a new set of reporting functions that traditionally required extensive knowledge of manual data calculation methods.
Unlike anything available on the market, the new model offers customers a fast, intuitive, and user-friendly reporting engine to help them meet upcoming regulatory requirements, including the European Energy Efficiency Directive (EED). In fact, the new capabilities go far beyond the metrics required by the EED, ensuring that customers can measure historical and real-time energy performance data of their data centers with respect to all the advanced reporting metrics specified in Schneider Electric’s White Paper 67.
EcoStruxure IT software enables owners and operators to measure and report on data center performance based on historical data and trend analysis, combined with artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time monitoring, to turn it into actionable information for sustainability improvement. With the new download feature, organizations can quantify and report quickly, simply by clicking a button, eliminating laborious manual tasks and making it faster and easier to leverage data to reduce the environmental impact of their data centers.
The main advantages include:
– Calculating and tracking PUE by location/room over time using the CEN/CENLEC 50600-4-2 methodology.
– Leveraging data analytics models and cloud-based data lakes to simplify PUE reporting.
– Reporting on current energy consumption per room and comparing it with historical trends.
– Generating “one-click” reports for regulations.
– Viewing trends over time for multiple data centers and distributed IT environments.
– Allowing customers to securely access and manipulate their data in their favorite tool through third-party integration and data export.
“At Schneider Electric, we recognize that sustainability is a journey and over the past three years, we have increased our investment to develop new software functions that streamline and simplify the operations of resilient, secure, and sustainable IT infrastructures,” says Kevin Brown, Senior Vice President, EcoStruxure IT, Schneider Electric. “The new reporting capabilities included with EcoStruxure IT have been tested and implemented within our own company, allowing customers to turn complex data into relevant information and report on key sustainability metrics.”
A new era for Green IT
In 2021, Schneider Electric launched its Schneider Sustainability Impact (SSI), unveiling the company’s sustainability commitments. In line with the SSI’s purpose, Schneider Electric’s CIO, Elizabeth Hackenson, kicked off the company’s Green IT program, a sustainable enterprise IT initiative to identify new and smart ways of decarbonization to help the program achieve its goal of reducing IT emissions by at least 5% annually.
As part of the program, Schneider Electric used its EcoStruxure IT software, which has been deployed in over 150 key centers worldwide to enhance the resilience and security of its IT operations. Through Green IT, it became evident that the new capabilities of EcoStruxure IT could also be leveraged for greater sustainability, allowing Schneider Electric to drastically improve visibility into its IT energy consumption. With insights from EcoStruxure IT, they were able to verify a 30% reduction in energy consumption in the second half of 2023 compared to the first half at their smart factory in Lexington, Kentucky.
During the process, Schneider Electric also used key findings and insights from their data to accelerate the development of the new reporting features of EcoStruxure IT.
As more companies prepare for upcoming regulations, such as the EU Energy Efficiency Directive, which requires reporting on IT and data center energy consumption starting in May 2024, the importance of accessing real-time primary data becomes even more critical. By launching the new AI-based dashboard and reporting features of EcoStruxure IT, customers can quickly leverage their data to meet the new regulatory requirements.