ABSTRACT
Metrics are an important way to understand the economic and environmental impact of Data Centres and the results of applying energy efficiency measures or integrating renewable energy sources. Low-level measurement of operational variables such as temperature and relative humidity in Data Centre IT rooms are key aspects as they are part of the service-level agreements in IT services. To assess the environmental impact of the Data Centres among other human-promoted activities is a key issue to assure the sustainability of our society and to prevent global warming effects. The main metric to evaluate the energy consumption in the Data Centre considering environmental issues is the Data Centre primary energy. Quantification of proper conversion factors is not an easy task, especially for electricity and thermal networks as it depends on several considerations, e.g., the mix of energy sources within certain geographical boundaries, average or marginal production, present or expected future values and so on.
