Impact Summary

• 3-5% Potential energy savings from predictive maintenance.
• Cost savings of $5,600 per minute through optimisation.
• Accelerated journey towards carbon neutrality in all its facilities and operations by
  2035.

The Challenge

Data Centres are facing ever-increasing demands on their infrastructure, while energy costs are going up. The pressure to remain online with minimal downtime is very real while maintaining such operations is often a challenging task for the operations team. Balancing the energy-intensive cooling requirements with Net Zero goals has become a priority for all sustainability-minded organisations. A leading multinational conglomerate specialising in engineering solutions was facing this exact difficulty. The company reached out to Ecolibrium to help optimise asset maintenance, associated costs, and energy usage.

Ecolibrium’s association with the organisation started in early March 2022. The client needed a single solution for the following requirements at its Bengaluru data centre –

• Efficiently capture and track real-time power consumption data and provide early warning signs for anomaly detection.
• Automate calculating the data centre’s Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).
• The maintenance team also wanted an integrated view of the facility’s assets (UPS, PAC)2 to gain insights for planned predictive maintenance (PPM).
• Monitor and report its carbon footprint (Scope 1 & 2) and work toward reducing it by boosting energy efficiency.

Solving all these parameters would ultimately improve the uptime at the data centre – an essential factor in ensuring smooth operations, productivity, improved sustainability and profitability.
Data centres need to achieve unprecedented uptime to keep pace with modern demands. Reported outages at a data centre can cost an organisation more than $250,000.These numbers, too, vary on the company size and vertical. The more significant an organisation, the higher the downtime costs.

The Solution

The client utilised Ecolibrium’s SmartSense AI/ML platform to improve equipment uptime and energy efficiency. As the first step, the Ecolibrium team set up a data acquisition strategy and established the critical parameters. Over the assessment period, the team identified that the facility needed more data
points and energy meters for SmartSense to perform enhanced analytics. They also pinpointed the lack of power quality parameters like Total Harmonie Distortion (THD), Power Factor (PF), and voltage profile for detailed analysis.

Putting SmartSense to work, the integration team developed a structure to meet the client’s needs. Once the data started syncing, SmartSense could accurately create and perform predictive maintenance alerts for assets, PUE calculation, and other vital parameters.

The real-time data analysis generated asset insights for UPS and PAC units. It highlighted voltage imbalances, excess power consumption, and other operational anomalies causing a higher PUE and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE).

SmartSense timely alerts notified users whenever the zone temperature at the facility exceeded the ideal range of 20-25°C to maintain the data centre’s cooler operating temperature.

The Outcomes

The client wanted its data centre’s PUE to run efficiently by optimising critical asset maintenance. SmartSense enabled the client to achieve precisely that.

• Utilising SmartSense’s total capacity for predictive maintenance of critical equipment enabled the client to secure savings of 3-5% minimum on energy costs.
• SmartSense functionality improved the data centre’s uptime.
• It helped the client avert average financial losses of $5,600 per minute at the Bengaluru data centre from improved uptime.
• SmartSense provided an integrated view of the assets (UPS and PAC) connected in the data centre. Timely early warning signals for corrective actions boosted energy efficiency, reducing Scope 1 carbon emissions and mitigating downtime.
• Moreover, SmartSense automated the PUE calculation process. The asset insights helped optimise the PUE, keeping it as low as possible.
• SmartSense allowed the client to track its Scope 2 emissions based on the energy consumed at the data centre.

With SmartSense and the Ecolibrium team, the company has a long-term partner that ensures seamless operations, high levels of efficacy, and optimal energy consumption.

For insights into how Ecolibrium AI powered platform SmartSense can be tailored to help you enhance asset operations and generate cost savings for Data Centres, connect with our team for a personalised demo and consultation