Schneider Electric, the leader in digital transformation of energy management and automation, today announced the introduction of new model based, automated sustainability reporting features within its EcoStruxure IT data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) software.
The release follows three years of strategic investment, and rigorous testing and development as part of Schneider Electric’s Green IT Program, led by Schneider Electric’s Chief Information Officer Elizabeth Hackenson.
Available to all EcoStruxure IT users starting in April, the new and enhanced reporting features combine 20 years of sustainability, regulatory, data centre and software development expertise with advanced machine learning. Customers will have access to a new set of reporting capabilities, which traditionally had required a deep understanding of manual data calculation methods.
Unlike anything available in the market, the new model offers customers a fast, intuitive, and simple-to-use reporting engine to help meet imminent regulatory requirements, such as the European Energy Efficiency Directive (EED). In fact, the new capabilities go far-beyond the EED-required metrics, ensuring customers can measure their data centres’ real-time and historical energy performance data against all of the advanced reporting metrics specified within Schneider Electric’s White Paper 67.
EcoStruxure IT software enables owners and operators to measure and report data centre performance based on historical data and trends analysis, combining it with artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time monitoring to turn it into actionable insights for improved sustainability. With the new download function, organizations can quickly quantify and report, at the click of a button – removing laborious manual tasks and making it faster and easier to harness the power of data to reduce the environmental impact of their data centres.
Key benefits include:
- Calculate and track PUE per site/room over time with CEN/CENLEC 50600-4-2 methodology.
- Leverage data analytic models and cloud-based data lake to simplify reporting of PUE.
- Report current power consumption per site room and report against historical trends.
- Utilize “click of a button” reporting for regulations.
- Witness trending over time for various data centres and distributed IT environments.
- Empower customers to securely access and manipulate their data in their preferred tool via third-party integration and data export.
“At Schneider Electric, we recognize that sustainability is a journey, and for the last three years, we’ve increased our investment to develop new software features that make it faster and simpler for our customers to operate resilient, secure and sustainable IT infrastructure,” said Kevin Brown, Senior Vice President, EcoStruxure IT, Schneider Electric. “The new reporting capabilities included with EcoStruxure IT have been tested and adopted by our own organization, and will allow customers to turn complex data into meaningful information, and report on key sustainability metrics.”
A new era for Green IT
In 2021, Schneider Electric released its Schneider Sustainability Impact (SSIs), publicizing the company’s sustainability commitments. Aligning with the SSI purpose, Schneider Electric’s CIO Elizabeth Hackenson kickstarted the company’s Green IT program – a sustainable, enterprise IT initiative that would identify new and intelligent decarbonization pathways to help the program achieve its objective of at least a 5% annual IT emissions reduction.
As part of the program, Schneider Electric utilized its EcoStruxure IT software, which was deployed across more than 140 key sites globally to improve resiliency and security of its IT operations. Through Green IT, it became apparent that new capabilities within EcoStruxure IT could also be leveraged for greater sustainability, allowing Schneider Electric to dramatically improve the visibility of its IT energy consumption. By utilizing the insights from EcoStruxure IT, they were able to witness a 30% energy consumption reduction in H2 ’23 versus H1 ’23 in its Lexington, Kentucky, smart factory.
During the process, Schneider Electric also utilized the key learnings and insights from its data to accelerate the development of the new EcoStruxure IT reporting features being announced today.
“When seeking to reduce IT and data centre energy consumption and CO2 emissions, organizations must establish a fact-based baseline, and access to real-time and historical data is vital,” said Elizabeth Hackenson, Chief Information Officer, Schneider Electric. “Through the use of EcoStruxure IT, we have continued to make significant progress in our mission to reduce our IT energy consumption and environmental impact, and to help the company progress its sustainability objectives. Today we’re making those benefits readily available to customers globally.”
As more companies prepare for upcoming regulations, such as the EU Energy Efficiency Directive, which mandates the reporting of IT and data centre energy consumption from May 2024, the significance of accessing real-time, primary data becomes even more critical. Through the launch of the new AI-driven dashboard and reporting capabilities in EcoStruxure IT across international regions, customers can quickly leverage their data to comply with the new regulatory requirements.
