New data-centre figures

According to a study by DatacenterDynamics, released in late 2011, global data centre power use in 2011 was 31 Gigawatts (GW), which is equivalent to the power use of several European nations, roughly 2% of global power use. These figures were projected to increase by 19% in 2012. Around 40% of all power used by data centres is to remove heat and could be considered waste. Removing heat effectively depends on the design of the cooling systems involved but also on that of the data centre and the choice of its technology. Effective use of in-rack equipment to monitor heat and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which can also help predict future power use, can also enhance efficiency.