Abstract: This paper presents a broad view of management of design and implementation of power systems for Data Centers. The paper outlines many challenges that are present because of the demanding requirements of Data Centers both in design and management, then introduces opportunities that recent technological advances have made possible. This paper presents several new approaches of ownership and responsibilities that directly affect financial viability of the Data Center.
ASHRAE 90.4 defines an alternate compliance path, specific to data centers, while the compliance requirements for “non-data center” components are contained in ASHRAE 90.1 . The 90.4 structure also streamlines the ongoing maintenance process as well ensures that Standards 90.1 and 90.4 stay in their respective lanes to avoid any overlap and redundancies relating to the technical and administrative boundaries. Updates to ASHRAE 90.1 will still include the alternate compliance path defined in ASHRAE 90.4. Conversely the 2022 Edition of 90.4-2022 refers to ASHRAE 90.1-2022; cross-referencing one another synchronously
Links to noteworthy coverage from expert agencies on the 2022 revisions:
This title resides on the standing agenda of our Infotech 400 colloquium; hosted several times per year and as close coupled with the annual meetings of ASHRAE International as possible. Technical committees generally meet during these meetings make decisions about the ASHRAE catalog. The next all committee conference will be hostedJanuary 20-24, 2024 in Chicago. As always we encourage education industry facility managers, energy conservation workgroups and sustainability professionals to participate directly in the ASHRAE consensus standard development process. It is one of the better facilities out there.
Proposed Addendum g makes changes to definitions were modified in section 3 and mandatory language in Section 6 to support the regulation of process heat and process ventilation was moved in the section for clarity. Other changes are added based on comments from the first public review including changes to informative notes.
Consultation closes June 4th
Update: February 10, 2023
The most actively managed consensus standard for data center energy supply operating in education communities (and most others) is not published by the IEEE but rather by ASHRAE International — ASHRAE 90.4 Energy Standard for Data Centers (2019). It is not required to be a free access title although anyone may participate in its development. It is copyrighted and ready for purchase but, for our purpose here, we need only examine its scope and purpose. A superceded version of 90.4 is available in the link below:
It is likely that the technical committee charged with updating this standard are already at work preparing an updated version that will supercede the 2019 Edition. CLICK HERE for a listing of Project Committee Interim Meetings.
We maintain many titles from the ASHRAE catalog on the standing agenda of our Mechanical, Energy 200/400, Data and Cloud teleconferences. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Originally posted Summer 2020.
ASHRAE International has released four new addenda to its energy conservation consensus document ASHRAE 90.4-2016 Energy Standard for Data Centers. This document establishes the minimum energy efficiency requirements of data centers for design and construction, for the creation of a plan for operation and maintenance and for utilization of on-site or off-site renewable energy resources.
It is a relatively new document more fully explained in an article published by ASHRAE in 2016 (Click here). The addenda described briefly:
Addendum a – clarifies existing requirements in Section 6.5 as well as introduce new provisions to encourage heat recovery within data centers.
Addendum b – clarifies existing requirements in Sections 6 and 11 and to provide guidance for taking credit for renewable energy systems.
Addendum d – a response to a Request for Interpretation on the 90.4 consideration of DieselRotary UPS Systems (DRUPS) and the corresponding accounting of these systems in the Electrical Loss Component (ELC). In crafting the IC, the committee also identified several marginal changes to 90.4 definitions and passages in Section 8 that would add further clarity to the issue. This addendum contains the proposed changes for that aim as well as other minor changes to correct spelling or text errors, incorporate the latest ELC values into Section 11, and to refresh information in the Normative Reference.
Addendum e adds language to Section 11 intended to clarify how compliance with Standard 90.4 can be achieved through the use of shared systems.
Comments are due September 6th. Until this deadline you may review the changes and comment upon them by by CLICKING HERE
Education facility managers, energy conservation workgroups and sustainability professionals are encouraged to participate directly in the ASHRAE standard development process. Start at ASHRAE’s public commenting facility:
The ASHRAE catalog is a priority title in our practice. This title appears on the standing agenda of our Infotech sessions. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
The largest planetarium on a U.S. college or university campus is the Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Fiske Planetarium features a 65-foot diameter dome and has undergone significant technological upgrades, making it one of the most advanced planetariums in the country. It offers a variety of shows, including live demonstrations and immersive experiences that simulate different cosmic phenomena and environments (CU Connections).
Safety and sustainability for any facility begins with an understanding of who shall occupy the built environment and how. University settings, with mixed-use phenomenon arising spontaneously and temporarily, often present challenges. Educational communities are a convergent settings for families; day care facilities among them. First principles regarding occupancy classifications for day care facilities appear in Section 308 of the International Building Code, Institutional Group I; linked below:
The ICC Institutional Group I-4 classification includes buildings and structures occupied by more than five persons of any age who received custodial care for fewer than 24 hours per day by persons other than parents or guardian, relatives by blood, marriage or adoption, and in a place other than the home of the person cared far. This group includes both adult and child day care.
We maintain focus on child day care. Many educational communities operate child day care enterprises for both academic study and/or as auxiliary (university employee benefit) enterprises.
Princeton University Child Care Center
Each of the International Code Council code development groups fetch back to a shared understanding of the nature of the facility; character of its occupants and prospective usage patterns.
The 2024 revision of the International Building code is in production now. Ahead of the formal, market release of the Group A tranche of titles you can sample the safety concepts in play during this revision with an examination of the documents linked below:
Search on the terms “day care” and “daycare” in the link at the top of this page to get a sample of the prevailing concepts; use of such facilities as storm shelters, for example.
“The Country School” | Winslow Homer
We encourage our safety and sustainability colleagues to participate directly in the ICC Code Development process. We slice horizontally through the disciplinary silos (“incumbent verticals”) created by hundreds of consensus product developers every week and we can say, upon considerable authority that the ICC consensus product development environment is one of the best in the world. Privately developed standards (for use by public agencies) is a far better way to discover and promulgate leading practice than originating technical specifics from legislative bodies. CLICK HERE to get started. Contact Kimberly Paarlberg (kpaarlberg@iccsafe.org) for more information.
There are competitor consensus products in this space — Chapter 18 Day-Care Occupancies in NFPA 5000 Building Construction and Safety Code, for example; a title we maintain the standing agenda of our Model Building Code teleconferences. It is developed from a different pool of expertise under a different due process regime. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
16yrs married to this RockStar today! Something like 25+ years together… 3 awesome wild kids and whole whack of crazy experiences together! I’ve Bullshitted my way to a lot of successes but Sarah’s been the best yet!… pic.twitter.com/BLBHTtwjSC
Educated at Yale College, Somerville College, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Medical School and Columbia Law School, Amy Wax speaks to the Buckley Institute, founded by William F. Buckley (Yale 1950). Links to National Centers at Bowling Green State University, the University of Virginia and the University of Nebraska.
People grow up in a web of relationships that is already in place, supporting them as they grow. From the inside out, it includes parents, extended family and clan, neighborhood groups and civic associations, church, local and provincial governments and finally national government.
The most important decision and life’s biggest hack is picking the right partner. pic.twitter.com/MeLu5it3rn
Planetarians’ Zoom Seminar of 2024 May 31. Preschool Children in the Dome. Led by Tony Smith (Astronomy Educator for Online Learning at ASP; planetarian), Anna Hurst (Program Director at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific) and Mary Holt (Planetarium Programs Specialist at California Academy of Sciences). How can planetariums offer engaging programming for preschool children and their families, an audience often overlooked and feared by even the most experienced planetarians?
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) and California Academy of Sciences (CAS) share some resources and experiences engaging pre-school children in earth and space science and then facilitate a conversation among attendees. What has worked well in your dome? What are the challenges? What support do you need to feel confident about reaching this audience?
yet we must work to ensure that it does not divide us.”
— Guglielmo Marconi
When the electric grid and the internet are down and there is no cell service, radio can still work to help communities stabilize. Starting 2024 we will break down our coverage of the radio frequency technology standards used in educational settlements into into two categories:
Radio 300: Security and maintenance radio. These usually use a single radio channel and operate in a half-duplex mode: only one user on the channel can transmit at a time, so users in a user group must take turns talking. The radio is normally in receive mode so the user can hear all other transmissions on the channel. When the user wants to talk he presses a “push-to-talk” button, which turns off the receiver and turns on the transmitter; when he releases the button the receiver is activated again. Multiple channels are provided so separate user groups can communicate in the same area without interfering with each other.
As of this posting APCO International has no public consultations on any titles in its public safety radio standards catalog.
Radio 400: Student radio. College radio stations are typically considered to be public radio radio stations in the way that they are funded by donation and grants. The term “Public radio” generally refers to classical music, jazz, and news. A more accurate term is community radio, as most staff are volunteers, although many radio stations limit staff to current or recent students instead of anyone from the local community. There has been a fair amount of drama over student-run radio station history; a topic we steer away from.
The Low Power FM radio service was created by the Commission in January 2000. LPFM stations are authorized for noncommercial educational broadcasting only (no commercial operation) and operate with an effective radiated power (ERP) of 100 watts (0.1 kilowatts) or less, with maximum facilities of 100 watts ERP at 30 meters (100 feet) antenna height above average terrain. The approximate service range of a 100 watt LPFM station is 5.6 kilometers (3.5 miles radius). LPFM stations are not protected from interference that may be received from other classes of FM stations.
We follow — but do not respond — to consultations on titles covering the use of radio frequencies for the Internet of Things. At the moment, most of that evolution happens at the consumer product level; though it is wise to contemplate the use of the electromagnetic spectrum during widespread and extended loss of broadband services.
Maxwell equations: Four lines that provide a complete description of light, electricity and magnetism
We do not include policy specifics regarding the migration of National Public Radio beyond cultural content into political news; though we acknowledge that the growth of publicly financed radio domiciled in education communities is a consideration in the technology of content preparation informed by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.
We drill into technical specifics of the following:
Radios used for campus public safety and campus maintenance
Student-run campus radio stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission as Low Power FM (LPFM)
Facilities for regional broadcast of National Public Radio operating from education communities
Off-campus transmission facilities such as broadcast towers.
Grounding, bonding, lightning protection of transmission and receiving equipment on buildings
Broadcast studio electrotechnologies
Radio technology is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission with no ANSI-accredited standards setting organizations involved in leading practice discovery and promulgation. Again, we do not cover creative and content issues. Join us today at 11 AM/ET using the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
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