Development of a simple power consumption model of information technology (IT) equipment for building simulation

Abstract

The IT equipment power consumption estimated by building simulation software is much higher than the actual case, but there are no simple solutions for building engineers to reduce the bias in data center models in building simulation. This paper address this issue by proposing a simple model of IT equipment load. The model estimates the IT equipment load based on critical control inputs of the IT equipment such as its processor utilization rate and on/off status, and a survey of literature for the ordinary values of these IT equipment control variables is conducted to facilitate its uses by building engineers. A case study was conducted with building models of large offices with lots of IT equipment, and the estimated annual building energy use was reduced by more than 30% in all three cases. This shows that the conventional constant thermal load model overestimates the IT equipment load and the IT equipment model improves the accuracy of modeling of data centers in building simulation by modeling the changes of the load with the status of the servers.