Our last blog post was way back in July and the reason we've been a little quiet is because we're quite busy.
Since our last update, our MD attended the SAI conference in London, this was on behalf of the BCS Green IT SG.
We conducted our first ESOS assessment on behalf of a catering services company in August, with a follow up meeting with the board and to complete the online forms in September.
We spent quite a bit of time, working out how to obtain a visa for a trip to India (very complicated, but at least we'll know for next time!)
We completed a second internal ISO50001 audit for a company based in the Midlands, we hope to see more of these in the future, especially with the ESOS deadline looming.
We conducted a CEEDA assessment in India, Mumbai to be precise in September.
We conducted another CEEDA assessment in Darmstadt, Germany the next week.
Later that week we were part of the Data Centre Alliance Team at the Annual Golf Day held this year, at Helidon Lakes, near Daventry, we came second which given my golfing skills is somewhat of a surprise (I wondered wny people were buying me tequila and calling me "el bandito")
The following week I should have been in Berlin for an EURECA meeting, but given the amount of travel in the previous weeks I opted for a conference call.
That weekend, following some news from my friends in London I attended the Charlton v Fulham match, followed by a few beers and a curry for the Jolly Boys Annual Gathering, this is ususally held in March but due to one of the boys being diagnosed with a cancer, we decided to hold it twice a year, also to co-incide with a birthday, much fun was had by all, we even watched the Ireland rugby match!
The following morning at 5am (and feeling quite fragile) I was off to Gatwick for a quick trip to Milan for the annunal EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) best practices meeting. This went well but as usual not all the topics were discussed and we'll be off to Milan again in the early new year for a very important discussion (more details at the time)
Upon my return I had a visit to the National Grid's Future Energy Scenarios workshop held in London at the Royal Academy of Engineering, this is always a useful event to attend at we learn about what the National Grid is thinking with respect to 4 different energy scenarios, more information can be found on their website.
I then attended the DCA Board of Governers meeting at Canary Wharf the following day.
Over the next quarter, we have the following provisional events scheduled.
We'll be in Norway, as of Monday evening to conduct a risk management workshop with a client, I'll be staying over and attending the Data Cloud Nordic event in Oslo on the 15th.
In October we'll be at the 451 Group's Data Centre Summit on the 21st October, followed by the BCS Green IT SG AGM, more info here
The following day (at the time of writing) we have a provisional ESOS assessment scheduled.
The week after we have a brief family trip to Scotland for half term, however I'll be visiting 2 clients on behalf of the EURECA project during the trip.
We have the following provisional trips scheduled, Vienna, Riga, Dublin, Gibraltar, and Saudi Arabia but I'm sure that a few more will drop in for Q4 and Q1 next year.
Wells, thats it for now, but we'll try to be a bit more visible in the future, until next time...
Sunday, 11 October 2015
Friday, 17 July 2015
The Internet of Things!
"So, what is the Internet of Things and how will it affect me?"
I first came across the Internet of Things back in 2011 when I attended a BCS talk at Coventry University on "cogent computing", this talk intrigued me as it spoke about "dust", a reference to the "Golden Compass" trilogy? No, well, perhaps, actually Yes, well hmmm and haw, No, maybe, erm, dunno"
Throughout the talk, the professor spoke about little computers and sensors/actuators sharing and processing data at a local wifi type level, little data as opposed to big data, and she had rigged a bomb disposal suit with temperature sensors to monitor the user and cameras so that operatives back at the command jeep could see exactly what was going on so that would have a record of everything that went on, in the unfortunate event that the device exploded.
I actually went to see her a few days later to talk about how this new cogent computing could help with our business of Green ICT and energy efficiency in Data Centres, it was then that she mentioned "dust" in a big way, her vision of thousands, no millions of little nano-sensor units equipped with CO2, temperature and humidity sensors, self powered, and wifi connected, well when you're that small you don't need much energy, linking together in a mesh type network with perhaps central hubs monitoring and processing larger chunks of data.
She described the science fiction of the past, think Star Trek, and all those scifi films you saw in the 80's, 90's etc being right here, right now, or at least a few years out, but certainly NOT the scifi of the 22nd or 23rd, 24th Centuries, but of the 21st!
So, what is the Internet of Things?
Essentially, it is machine to machine communications, monitoring and measuring and acting upon variances in data, you could call it a glorified Building Management System, but on a far wider and also smaller scale.
You could for instance, make every light in your house IoT enabled, you could programme the system turn on or off in response to the sound of your voice or even react to a text from your smart phone or even automatically based upon the external light levels.
Going a step further, imagine this, you go shopping, and everything you put in the fridge is IoT'd, each packet would "register" with the fridge central processor and tell it what it was, where it was located and what its ideal environmental conditions were so the produce is kept in the optimal conditions, over the next few weeks the packets still communicate with the fridge and advise when the product has past its "eat by" date and when you go to the fridge to get a beer, it tells you that the Mexican wrap you bought six weeks ago is well beyond its "eat by" date and you should throw it out.
Imagine, if you then linked up to "scoffbot" and it knew what you had in the fridge and the store cupboards and sent you a number of recipes based upon the food you had already purchased so waste could be reduced.
Go further, and imagine that you have a wearable device that is measuring your vital signs in terms of blood sugar levels, nutrients etc and let "scoffbot" design your perfect dinner based upon what you need and what you've got, the ultimate diet coach, no more weight-watchers here!
Maybe it would even link up with the fridge and the supermarket to amend your normal order so that your diet improves.
Could the IoT be the answer to healthcare?, imagine that the same wearable device is watching for warning signs, in certain cases it could help by adjusting your diet or prompting you to go to the health clinic for further diagnostic testing or even calling for assistance if you keel over after a night on the pop and fall down and break your leg!
The potential of the IoT is massive, it could really change the way we manage our ecosystems for the better, but it does have some drawbacks and challenges and we'll cover those in our next blog, or the one after!
I first came across the Internet of Things back in 2011 when I attended a BCS talk at Coventry University on "cogent computing", this talk intrigued me as it spoke about "dust", a reference to the "Golden Compass" trilogy? No, well, perhaps, actually Yes, well hmmm and haw, No, maybe, erm, dunno"
Throughout the talk, the professor spoke about little computers and sensors/actuators sharing and processing data at a local wifi type level, little data as opposed to big data, and she had rigged a bomb disposal suit with temperature sensors to monitor the user and cameras so that operatives back at the command jeep could see exactly what was going on so that would have a record of everything that went on, in the unfortunate event that the device exploded.
I actually went to see her a few days later to talk about how this new cogent computing could help with our business of Green ICT and energy efficiency in Data Centres, it was then that she mentioned "dust" in a big way, her vision of thousands, no millions of little nano-sensor units equipped with CO2, temperature and humidity sensors, self powered, and wifi connected, well when you're that small you don't need much energy, linking together in a mesh type network with perhaps central hubs monitoring and processing larger chunks of data.
She described the science fiction of the past, think Star Trek, and all those scifi films you saw in the 80's, 90's etc being right here, right now, or at least a few years out, but certainly NOT the scifi of the 22nd or 23rd, 24th Centuries, but of the 21st!
So, what is the Internet of Things?
Essentially, it is machine to machine communications, monitoring and measuring and acting upon variances in data, you could call it a glorified Building Management System, but on a far wider and also smaller scale.
You could for instance, make every light in your house IoT enabled, you could programme the system turn on or off in response to the sound of your voice or even react to a text from your smart phone or even automatically based upon the external light levels.
Going a step further, imagine this, you go shopping, and everything you put in the fridge is IoT'd, each packet would "register" with the fridge central processor and tell it what it was, where it was located and what its ideal environmental conditions were so the produce is kept in the optimal conditions, over the next few weeks the packets still communicate with the fridge and advise when the product has past its "eat by" date and when you go to the fridge to get a beer, it tells you that the Mexican wrap you bought six weeks ago is well beyond its "eat by" date and you should throw it out.
Imagine, if you then linked up to "scoffbot" and it knew what you had in the fridge and the store cupboards and sent you a number of recipes based upon the food you had already purchased so waste could be reduced.
Go further, and imagine that you have a wearable device that is measuring your vital signs in terms of blood sugar levels, nutrients etc and let "scoffbot" design your perfect dinner based upon what you need and what you've got, the ultimate diet coach, no more weight-watchers here!
Maybe it would even link up with the fridge and the supermarket to amend your normal order so that your diet improves.
Could the IoT be the answer to healthcare?, imagine that the same wearable device is watching for warning signs, in certain cases it could help by adjusting your diet or prompting you to go to the health clinic for further diagnostic testing or even calling for assistance if you keel over after a night on the pop and fall down and break your leg!
The potential of the IoT is massive, it could really change the way we manage our ecosystems for the better, but it does have some drawbacks and challenges and we'll cover those in our next blog, or the one after!
Saturday, 13 June 2015
EURECA Update
The EURECA project website is now live and you can find it here.
Our profile can be found here
Work continues on the identification of all the standards, best practices guides and other relevant possible procurement benchmarks that public sector organisation use across Europe.
As you can imagine this has been quite a hard task, although we were aware of 90% of the possible standards, other consortium partners have been providing some country specific information, especially our colleagues in Germany and The Netherlands. We're up to about 100 different documents at the present time and we're working to reduce this to a more manageable size, which is not that easy it must be said, a lot of energy efficiency best practices seem to be little more than a "cut and paste" of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres but then I suppose that when a very good series of best practices (155 at the last count) is published free, other countries and organisations will use it.
June has been very busy to date, earlier in the month I was in Monaco for Data Cloud Congress which was a great success for us, with 2 possible long term assignments.
I was then in Sheffield to visit our partners ICEOTOPE to see their new petagen product, more info can be found on their website here.
Then I was in London for two meetings with potential partners, the first was a sales and marketing and the second a standards implementation project. (Both are subject to non disclosure agreements so I can't talk about them.)
This week I will be in Stoke for a meeting with a very secret project again I'm unable to disclose and then in London for a EURECA meeting.
Next week I'll be in Paris for the ISO SC39 Plenary.
We've been approached to write a series of blog articles for a new data centre colocation provider and once this is live I'll provide a link.
Until next time, enjoy the British Summer (dry, wet, hot and cold!)
Our profile can be found here
Work continues on the identification of all the standards, best practices guides and other relevant possible procurement benchmarks that public sector organisation use across Europe.
As you can imagine this has been quite a hard task, although we were aware of 90% of the possible standards, other consortium partners have been providing some country specific information, especially our colleagues in Germany and The Netherlands. We're up to about 100 different documents at the present time and we're working to reduce this to a more manageable size, which is not that easy it must be said, a lot of energy efficiency best practices seem to be little more than a "cut and paste" of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres but then I suppose that when a very good series of best practices (155 at the last count) is published free, other countries and organisations will use it.
June has been very busy to date, earlier in the month I was in Monaco for Data Cloud Congress which was a great success for us, with 2 possible long term assignments.
I was then in Sheffield to visit our partners ICEOTOPE to see their new petagen product, more info can be found on their website here.
Then I was in London for two meetings with potential partners, the first was a sales and marketing and the second a standards implementation project. (Both are subject to non disclosure agreements so I can't talk about them.)
This week I will be in Stoke for a meeting with a very secret project again I'm unable to disclose and then in London for a EURECA meeting.
Next week I'll be in Paris for the ISO SC39 Plenary.
We've been approached to write a series of blog articles for a new data centre colocation provider and once this is live I'll provide a link.
Until next time, enjoy the British Summer (dry, wet, hot and cold!)
Tuesday, 26 May 2015
Public Sector Show
Carbon3IT Ltd with our US Partners ISI will be attending the Public Sector show on the 23rd June 2015 at the Excel Arena, more information on the show can be found here.
We'll be available to talk about our data centre optimisation services that utilise the ISI Snapshot software product as well as our data centre assessment and auditing services.
You can find our exhibitor profile here
Carbon3IT Ltd are the UK's leading data centre energy efficiency consultancy and have a wide range of global clients.
Carbon3IT Ltd provide review services for the EU - JRC for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency)
Carbon3IT Ltd provide assessment and auditing services for the BCS/DCD CEEDA award.
Our MD is active in the standards arena with formal membership of the BSI IST/46 committee and has recently been appointed liaison between IST/46 and TC 215
Carbon3IT Ltd is a member of the DC EURECA consortium an EU funded project to identify and advance the procurement of green data centres and data centre service by the EU public sector, this project commenced in March and is scheduled to run until 2017.
Contact us on info@carbon3it.com or via @carbon3it on twitter.
You can also phone us on +44 (0)1926 843835
We'll be available to talk about our data centre optimisation services that utilise the ISI Snapshot software product as well as our data centre assessment and auditing services.
You can find our exhibitor profile here
Carbon3IT Ltd are the UK's leading data centre energy efficiency consultancy and have a wide range of global clients.
Carbon3IT Ltd provide review services for the EU - JRC for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency)
Carbon3IT Ltd provide assessment and auditing services for the BCS/DCD CEEDA award.
Our MD is active in the standards arena with formal membership of the BSI IST/46 committee and has recently been appointed liaison between IST/46 and TC 215
Carbon3IT Ltd is a member of the DC EURECA consortium an EU funded project to identify and advance the procurement of green data centres and data centre service by the EU public sector, this project commenced in March and is scheduled to run until 2017.
Contact us on info@carbon3it.com or via @carbon3it on twitter.
You can also phone us on +44 (0)1926 843835
Rubbish....
just rubbish, I suppose it is because we are so close to the problem that we get annoyed when we see articles like this one that seeks to undermine the ESOS scheme.
Lets get something straight right way, the ESOS or Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme is to...identify energy savings opportunities.
ISO50001 is an International Standard that "specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving an energy management system, whose purpose is to enable an organisation to follow a systematic approach in achieving continual improvement of energy performance, including energy efficiency, energy use and consumption"
This in itself is a mechanism to identify energy savings opportunities but it is only partially what is required by ESOS.
In fact, even if you have ISO50001 certification it DOES NOT exempt you from having to complete an ESOS assessment, it merely exempts that portion that is covered by the ISO 50001 certificate from further analysis as required by ESOS.
For instance, (and I know this applies to some data centres) say you have 5 data centres, built at various times and to the prevailing design standards applicable at that time, your first data centre was built in 1990 and your latest in 2012. You'd probably get your latest data centre certified to ISO50001 because the BMS/EMS and monitoring infrastructure provides you with the relevant data to comply with the ISO50001 requirements. Your older facilities however, with no monitoring and old equipment will not comply.
So, you develop an Energy Management System to cover the 2012 facility but not the older ones, but you do have a plan to roll out ISO certification to the others when time and finances allow.
From this point on, you do nothing believing that your ISO certification covers your organisation.
Early next year you will get a letter from the Environment Agency advising that as you have failed to carry out an ESOS, and you will asked to complete an ESOS or be hit with a fine, which rises every day you fail to submit your ESOS.
Or, you recognise that your ISO50001 certificate ONLY covers the 2012 data centre and get a registered ESOS assessor to review your company and the energy audit team you have appointed, he will advise that the ISO50001 only covers the 2012 data centre and you need to conduct an ESOS assessment on the other 4 facilities.
Carbon3IT Ltd is the ONLY specialist data centre energy and auditing company in the UK, we are ISO50001 Lead Auditors, registered ESOS assessors, and provide auditing and assessment services to the EU-JRC and BCS/DCD CEEDA award.
You can contact us on info@carbon3it.com or 01926 843835 to book your initial ESOS assessment
Lets get something straight right way, the ESOS or Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme is to...identify energy savings opportunities.
ISO50001 is an International Standard that "specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving an energy management system, whose purpose is to enable an organisation to follow a systematic approach in achieving continual improvement of energy performance, including energy efficiency, energy use and consumption"
This in itself is a mechanism to identify energy savings opportunities but it is only partially what is required by ESOS.
In fact, even if you have ISO50001 certification it DOES NOT exempt you from having to complete an ESOS assessment, it merely exempts that portion that is covered by the ISO 50001 certificate from further analysis as required by ESOS.
For instance, (and I know this applies to some data centres) say you have 5 data centres, built at various times and to the prevailing design standards applicable at that time, your first data centre was built in 1990 and your latest in 2012. You'd probably get your latest data centre certified to ISO50001 because the BMS/EMS and monitoring infrastructure provides you with the relevant data to comply with the ISO50001 requirements. Your older facilities however, with no monitoring and old equipment will not comply.
So, you develop an Energy Management System to cover the 2012 facility but not the older ones, but you do have a plan to roll out ISO certification to the others when time and finances allow.
From this point on, you do nothing believing that your ISO certification covers your organisation.
Early next year you will get a letter from the Environment Agency advising that as you have failed to carry out an ESOS, and you will asked to complete an ESOS or be hit with a fine, which rises every day you fail to submit your ESOS.
Or, you recognise that your ISO50001 certificate ONLY covers the 2012 data centre and get a registered ESOS assessor to review your company and the energy audit team you have appointed, he will advise that the ISO50001 only covers the 2012 data centre and you need to conduct an ESOS assessment on the other 4 facilities.
Carbon3IT Ltd is the ONLY specialist data centre energy and auditing company in the UK, we are ISO50001 Lead Auditors, registered ESOS assessors, and provide auditing and assessment services to the EU-JRC and BCS/DCD CEEDA award.
You can contact us on info@carbon3it.com or 01926 843835 to book your initial ESOS assessment
Monday, 18 May 2015
May Update
Welcome to the British Summer!
As I write it is raining outside which of course means that some data centres will be operating 100% free cooling options today, which is a very good thing.
So, what have we been up to since our last blog post?
The EURECA project website has now gone live and you can see it here, we've been working on the first deliverable which is the creation of the EURECA matrix and we aim to complete this task by the end of May.
As part of this work package our MD has been traveling across Europe, Milan in Italy in April, and so far in May, Berlin and Paris.
Further trips are scheduled in June for Monaco http://www.datacloudcongress.com/ and to Paris for an ISO SC39 Plenary meeting.
This is all part of the work to map the standards landscape for data centres energy efficiency best practices.
We'll be exhibiting at the Public Sector Show http://www.publicsectorshow.co.uk/ on the 23rd June with our partners ISI to demonstrate their ISI Snapshot, data centre optimsation product.
Tickets for public sector employees are free but limited, so get in there now to secure your place, unfortunately if you are not from the public sector you'll have to pay.
We have had a number of CEEDA technical calls, and completed a new CEEDA assessment for an major UK high street bank, alas non disclosure agreements prevent us from talking about who they are and where their data centre is, but I can advise that it is a state of the art facility and they should be rightly proud of what they have built.
They may be some press information in future editions of the Datacenter Dynamics magazine but don't hold your breath!
My international colleagues will be assessing a data centre in the LATAM region later this month and we have a number awaiting in the EMEA and APAC regions, these probably will not be restricted so when we do them you be in the loop.
Our SFL project has hit a minor delay but we hope to get this back on the road and rolling asap, the difficulty is in scheduling time when all the relevant parties can get around the table.
The launch date has been put back until Q3 but there will be a press release around the time of the London Tech Week, more information on this series of events can be found here.
Along with our current EURECA partners, the DCA, UEL and maki consulting, we've submitted a project to the EU to assist in the co-ordination of energy efficiency ICT across the EU, we're expecting this to be finalised sometime in Q4 and we'll keep you up to date with things as they occur.
On the BCS side of things, we had an excellent turnout for our IoT practical demonstration event and webinar and we have scheduled an number of other events throughout the year.
Please keep in touch with our website and social media feeds for further information.
Thats it for now, please get in contact with us on our usual contact lists if you require any help with your green IT project, energy efficiency for data centres or any of our current projects.
Until next time.....
As I write it is raining outside which of course means that some data centres will be operating 100% free cooling options today, which is a very good thing.
So, what have we been up to since our last blog post?
The EURECA project website has now gone live and you can see it here, we've been working on the first deliverable which is the creation of the EURECA matrix and we aim to complete this task by the end of May.
As part of this work package our MD has been traveling across Europe, Milan in Italy in April, and so far in May, Berlin and Paris.
Further trips are scheduled in June for Monaco http://www.datacloudcongress.com/ and to Paris for an ISO SC39 Plenary meeting.
This is all part of the work to map the standards landscape for data centres energy efficiency best practices.
We'll be exhibiting at the Public Sector Show http://www.publicsectorshow.co.uk/ on the 23rd June with our partners ISI to demonstrate their ISI Snapshot, data centre optimsation product.
Tickets for public sector employees are free but limited, so get in there now to secure your place, unfortunately if you are not from the public sector you'll have to pay.
We have had a number of CEEDA technical calls, and completed a new CEEDA assessment for an major UK high street bank, alas non disclosure agreements prevent us from talking about who they are and where their data centre is, but I can advise that it is a state of the art facility and they should be rightly proud of what they have built.
They may be some press information in future editions of the Datacenter Dynamics magazine but don't hold your breath!
My international colleagues will be assessing a data centre in the LATAM region later this month and we have a number awaiting in the EMEA and APAC regions, these probably will not be restricted so when we do them you be in the loop.
Our SFL project has hit a minor delay but we hope to get this back on the road and rolling asap, the difficulty is in scheduling time when all the relevant parties can get around the table.
The launch date has been put back until Q3 but there will be a press release around the time of the London Tech Week, more information on this series of events can be found here.
Along with our current EURECA partners, the DCA, UEL and maki consulting, we've submitted a project to the EU to assist in the co-ordination of energy efficiency ICT across the EU, we're expecting this to be finalised sometime in Q4 and we'll keep you up to date with things as they occur.
On the BCS side of things, we had an excellent turnout for our IoT practical demonstration event and webinar and we have scheduled an number of other events throughout the year.
Please keep in touch with our website and social media feeds for further information.
Thats it for now, please get in contact with us on our usual contact lists if you require any help with your green IT project, energy efficiency for data centres or any of our current projects.
Until next time.....
Sunday, 15 March 2015
ESOS & Data Centre - Update
As promised, an update on ESOS.
Our MD and principal consultant has now been awarded his ESOS lead assessor qualification, this required prior knowledge of energy auditing best practices (gained through ISO 50001 in his case), attendance on an ESOS lead assessor course, the completion of an assessment paper (apparently he achieved one of the highest scores) and a peer review (successfully completed)
We are now listed on the EMA ESOS register, which can be found here .
Data Centre World took place at London's Excel Arena last week and we took the opportunity to speak to many of the exhibitors and delegates about ESOS, many of them were unaware of the legislation (which is going to be huge problem, especially as the end date is the 5th December 2015) but those who were, were mystified by some of the quotes they had been getting from ESOS lead assessors to sign off or conduct and sign off the ESOS report.
They ranged from £375 (yes, that is correct!) to £75,000 for a 4 site Data Centre company, which included 3 data centre sites and 1 office complex with a data centre attached.
The variance is alarming, what exactly are you getting for your money?
Well, as a ISO 50001 auditor and an ESOS assessor company, we can tell you that there are 2 ways to comply with the legislation, the first is to do what the EU Commission is intending you to do and that is to conduct a thorough detailed energy audit of all your operations as required in the legislation, this can be fulfilled by your own internal audit team (as long as the quality of the data is in compliance!), or by the ESOS lead assessor, identify the potential energy savings and prioritise them to your companies internal financial standard and then seek sign off by a registered ESOS lead assessor (to check the methodology, data and savings costings and priority) and to advise on actual compliance with DECC.
The second way is to do a tick box exercise, use your electricity bills, hope that there are no energy savings opportunities, do the absolute minimum to be compliant and hope that you do not get audited.
There will always be energy saving opportunities!
Bearing in mind that once all the data has been compiled, the EU will expect that some energy saving WILL take place, if it does not, then the scope of the legislation may well change for the next reporting period to mandate that the top 4 energy saving opportunities identified in the ESOS report by the time of the next reporting period.
It is entirely possible that an organisation will manage to escape censure from ESOS (fines are applicable for non compliance, and continued non compliance until an ESOS report is produced) but with energy prices rising it may be wasted exercise.
We offer the following services:
ESOS Scoping, we will visit your premises and conduct a ESOS scoping audit, this will determine the extent of the required ESOS audit that you should undertake given your current status, this will include the quality of the data, the ability of your current team, and the future strategic view of your organisation.
This service is priced @ £1000 + VAT + UK expenses (we normally travel by train but for certain assignments we may need to travel the day before and hire cars etc, this will be passed on at cost)
Once we have completed our initial assessment we will provide you with a detailed breakdown including our costs of what you should do to complete your ESOS assessment.
This may include the installation of additional sub metering equipment, a further review of the energy data, your processes, and the verification or identification of energy saving opportunities, which may take additional time.
We only work in the Data Centre fields, but you can use our services in conjunction with your normal energy consulting service as they are EXTREMELY unlikely to have the depth of knowledge required to identify energy savings opportunities in the white space and M&E sides of your business and have operations knowledge and will make suggestions for energy saving that are, to be frank, dangerous and likely to cause problems in your IT and FM teams.
We are very well experienced in data centre auditing as we provide review services for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency), undertake CEEDA assessments for DCPro, are ISO 50001 lead auditors and are conducting research into energy efficient best practice for data centres as a beneficiary of the EU funded DC EURECA programme.
If you would like to arrange an ESOS scoping visit please contact us on 01926 843 835 , email info@carbon3it.com, or follow us on twitter @carbon3it and direct message us.
Our MD and principal consultant has now been awarded his ESOS lead assessor qualification, this required prior knowledge of energy auditing best practices (gained through ISO 50001 in his case), attendance on an ESOS lead assessor course, the completion of an assessment paper (apparently he achieved one of the highest scores) and a peer review (successfully completed)
We are now listed on the EMA ESOS register, which can be found here .
Data Centre World took place at London's Excel Arena last week and we took the opportunity to speak to many of the exhibitors and delegates about ESOS, many of them were unaware of the legislation (which is going to be huge problem, especially as the end date is the 5th December 2015) but those who were, were mystified by some of the quotes they had been getting from ESOS lead assessors to sign off or conduct and sign off the ESOS report.
They ranged from £375 (yes, that is correct!) to £75,000 for a 4 site Data Centre company, which included 3 data centre sites and 1 office complex with a data centre attached.
The variance is alarming, what exactly are you getting for your money?
Well, as a ISO 50001 auditor and an ESOS assessor company, we can tell you that there are 2 ways to comply with the legislation, the first is to do what the EU Commission is intending you to do and that is to conduct a thorough detailed energy audit of all your operations as required in the legislation, this can be fulfilled by your own internal audit team (as long as the quality of the data is in compliance!), or by the ESOS lead assessor, identify the potential energy savings and prioritise them to your companies internal financial standard and then seek sign off by a registered ESOS lead assessor (to check the methodology, data and savings costings and priority) and to advise on actual compliance with DECC.
The second way is to do a tick box exercise, use your electricity bills, hope that there are no energy savings opportunities, do the absolute minimum to be compliant and hope that you do not get audited.
There will always be energy saving opportunities!
Bearing in mind that once all the data has been compiled, the EU will expect that some energy saving WILL take place, if it does not, then the scope of the legislation may well change for the next reporting period to mandate that the top 4 energy saving opportunities identified in the ESOS report by the time of the next reporting period.
It is entirely possible that an organisation will manage to escape censure from ESOS (fines are applicable for non compliance, and continued non compliance until an ESOS report is produced) but with energy prices rising it may be wasted exercise.
We offer the following services:
ESOS Scoping, we will visit your premises and conduct a ESOS scoping audit, this will determine the extent of the required ESOS audit that you should undertake given your current status, this will include the quality of the data, the ability of your current team, and the future strategic view of your organisation.
This service is priced @ £1000 + VAT + UK expenses (we normally travel by train but for certain assignments we may need to travel the day before and hire cars etc, this will be passed on at cost)
Once we have completed our initial assessment we will provide you with a detailed breakdown including our costs of what you should do to complete your ESOS assessment.
This may include the installation of additional sub metering equipment, a further review of the energy data, your processes, and the verification or identification of energy saving opportunities, which may take additional time.
We only work in the Data Centre fields, but you can use our services in conjunction with your normal energy consulting service as they are EXTREMELY unlikely to have the depth of knowledge required to identify energy savings opportunities in the white space and M&E sides of your business and have operations knowledge and will make suggestions for energy saving that are, to be frank, dangerous and likely to cause problems in your IT and FM teams.
We are very well experienced in data centre auditing as we provide review services for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency), undertake CEEDA assessments for DCPro, are ISO 50001 lead auditors and are conducting research into energy efficient best practice for data centres as a beneficiary of the EU funded DC EURECA programme.
If you would like to arrange an ESOS scoping visit please contact us on 01926 843 835 , email info@carbon3it.com, or follow us on twitter @carbon3it and direct message us.
Sunday, 22 February 2015
ESOS & Data Centres
Some of our readers will be aware of the Energy Savings Opportunities Scheme (ESOS) which is the UK's interpretation of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive Article 8 which requires all large organisations that qualify (over 250 employees, an annual turnover in excess of €50 Million (£38,937,777) and an annual balance sheet total in excess of €43 Million (£33,486,489) (Conversion correct as of 16th Feb 2015) to undertake a MANDATORY energy audit of their organisation.
Further details can be found on the DECC and Environment Agency websites.
All organisations will have to get their audits "signed off" by ESOS Lead Assessors who can be found on a register located on the DECC website.
Areas of "significant energy consumption" are required to have their potential energy savings assessed and costed, however organisations are not required to implement any changes identified at this stage.
As data centres are significant users of energy, this means that data centres/server rooms will need to be audited, either as part of a larger organisation (enterprise) or colocation sites (wholesale).
Carbon3IT Ltd has sent one of its consultants to undertake official ESOS training to become lead assessors under the scheme and in a few weeks we expect to be on the official register and able to sign off energy audits for our customers.
Some exemptions apply to the scheme such as certification to the ISO Energy Management System Standard ISO 50001, however organisations holding this certification will still have to undertake an energy audit and have this signed off by a registered ESOS lead assessor.
Carbon3IT Ltd are leaders in the data centre auditing field, our MD is a certified data centre audit professional (CDCAP), reviews the applications for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) on behalf of the EU-JRC, provides under contract assessment services to the BCS/DCD for the BCS Certified Energy Efficient Data Centre Award (CEEDA) more details here
We're currently working on a full ESOS/Data Centres package and will provide details of this, once its been finalised via our usual social media feeds and website.
Further details can be found on the DECC and Environment Agency websites.
All organisations will have to get their audits "signed off" by ESOS Lead Assessors who can be found on a register located on the DECC website.
Areas of "significant energy consumption" are required to have their potential energy savings assessed and costed, however organisations are not required to implement any changes identified at this stage.
As data centres are significant users of energy, this means that data centres/server rooms will need to be audited, either as part of a larger organisation (enterprise) or colocation sites (wholesale).
Carbon3IT Ltd has sent one of its consultants to undertake official ESOS training to become lead assessors under the scheme and in a few weeks we expect to be on the official register and able to sign off energy audits for our customers.
Some exemptions apply to the scheme such as certification to the ISO Energy Management System Standard ISO 50001, however organisations holding this certification will still have to undertake an energy audit and have this signed off by a registered ESOS lead assessor.
Carbon3IT Ltd are leaders in the data centre auditing field, our MD is a certified data centre audit professional (CDCAP), reviews the applications for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) on behalf of the EU-JRC, provides under contract assessment services to the BCS/DCD for the BCS Certified Energy Efficient Data Centre Award (CEEDA) more details here
We're currently working on a full ESOS/Data Centres package and will provide details of this, once its been finalised via our usual social media feeds and website.
Tuesday, 3 February 2015
January 2015
Well, welcome to 2015, and its a very important milestone for Carbon3IT Ltd.
We commenced operations in January 2010, so we've been in business for 5 years!
I must say that I fully expected to be back working for a company within 2 years, but we've kept our foot to the throttle and here we are 5 years later thriving.
In 2015, we will be commencing our EU Funded project in March/April time and that is scheduled to last until 2017 so we've got a lot of work to cover and more importantly the project covers all our base costs so anything else we do will be icing on the cake, and what a cake it shaping up to be.
We are continuing our work with the EU-JRC with the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) and we understand that there are a lot of changes afoot for the programme, you may have noticed that the 2015 revision has been published, if not you can find it here
We are also continuing our work with the BCS CEEDA programme and you can find out all about that here and here
We've also got two secret projects we're working on, one is due to be launched very soon and the other towards the back end of 2015, perhaps early 2016 we'll clearly let you know about both projects via our social media feeds, our twitter account @carbon3it and our facebook page as well as on this blog and our website, so keep coming back to check for updates.
If you're a public sector person with control over your data centre operations, you may not be aware that the Cabinet Office has released advice via the "Greening Government ICT" portal that data centres are required to be a "participant" in the EUCOC (mentioned above), you will need to check, if for instance you outsource your data centre that your outsourcing provider is registered in the EUCOC, you can visit the website to check. If you are not a participant you are strongly recommended to become one and you'll be pleased to know that we can help, not only can we help but you can engage us through the G Cloud, versions 4 and 6, or you can drop our MD/Consultant a quick email here
Finally, all of our connections and partners have events this year that we'll be attending in one form or another, please visit their websites as listed below:
BCS Green IT SG
BCS Data Centre SG
Data Centre Alliance
Green Grid
Datacentre.Me
Connect2DC
We'll no doubt see you at one event or another!
We commenced operations in January 2010, so we've been in business for 5 years!
I must say that I fully expected to be back working for a company within 2 years, but we've kept our foot to the throttle and here we are 5 years later thriving.
In 2015, we will be commencing our EU Funded project in March/April time and that is scheduled to last until 2017 so we've got a lot of work to cover and more importantly the project covers all our base costs so anything else we do will be icing on the cake, and what a cake it shaping up to be.
We are continuing our work with the EU-JRC with the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) and we understand that there are a lot of changes afoot for the programme, you may have noticed that the 2015 revision has been published, if not you can find it here
We are also continuing our work with the BCS CEEDA programme and you can find out all about that here and here
We've also got two secret projects we're working on, one is due to be launched very soon and the other towards the back end of 2015, perhaps early 2016 we'll clearly let you know about both projects via our social media feeds, our twitter account @carbon3it and our facebook page as well as on this blog and our website, so keep coming back to check for updates.
If you're a public sector person with control over your data centre operations, you may not be aware that the Cabinet Office has released advice via the "Greening Government ICT" portal that data centres are required to be a "participant" in the EUCOC (mentioned above), you will need to check, if for instance you outsource your data centre that your outsourcing provider is registered in the EUCOC, you can visit the website to check. If you are not a participant you are strongly recommended to become one and you'll be pleased to know that we can help, not only can we help but you can engage us through the G Cloud, versions 4 and 6, or you can drop our MD/Consultant a quick email here
Finally, all of our connections and partners have events this year that we'll be attending in one form or another, please visit their websites as listed below:
BCS Green IT SG
BCS Data Centre SG
Data Centre Alliance
Green Grid
Datacentre.Me
Connect2DC
We'll no doubt see you at one event or another!
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