The National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) has announced the release of a set of new data centre ratings tools.

“These new tools include what we believe to be a world’s first for rating the environmental performance of the IT equipment within a data centre,” New South Wales Miister for the Environment Robyn Parker said.

These new rating tools sit in the NABERS suite of energy efficiency benchmarking products and will provide the data centre industry with the means to benchmark their current energy efficiency and reward industry leaders and innovators.

“With data centres responsible for 1.5 per cent of Australia’s total annual energy consumption1, the need for tools to enable greater energy efficiency in this sector is evident.

There are three NABERS rating tools available for data centres owners, operators and tenants:

  • IT Equipment – a world’s first in measuring and benchmarking the energy efficiency of the IT equipment within a data centre.
  • Infrastructure – uses the internationally recognised Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) to assess the efficiency of the building services (e.g. cooling and lighting). For the first time there will be a rigorous, independently assessed and accredited performance rating available for data centre operators.
  • Whole Facility – combines the IT Equipment and Infrastructure rating metrics to assess the energy efficiency of the data centre as a whole.