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WWW.LEGRAND.COM
WHITE PAPER
THE UPS IN DATA CENTERS AND THEIR MAIN FEATURES
TOTAL COST
OF OWNERSHIP
Reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for all IT critical applications such as Data Center, is one of the most important and
relevant objectives for buyers and owners. Today Data Center represents a fundamental structure for a company on which
the entire organization depends. For this reason, it is important to ensure its correct functioning and efficiency but ensuring
maximum reliability and availability.
DEFINITON:
TCO is the sum of the initial capital expenditures (CAPEX), which includes the
cost of equipment and installation expenses, and the ongoing and long-term
operational expenditures (OpEx). In addition, predicting and measuring TCO for
the physical infrastructure are required for return-on-investment (ROI) analysis
and other business decision processes. TCO is a critical metric when designing
a new Data Center facility or selecting equipment. Yet, with the explosion of
Data Center expansion identifying and weighing the value of TCO variables when
specifying, building and operating a Data Center may be more elusive. A simple
miscalculation can cost companies millions of dollars every year.
We know that energy is certainly one of those critical TCO variables, as Data Centers
are significant consumers of energy. Servers and data equipment account for 55
percent of the energy used by a Data Center, followed by 30 percent for the cooling
equipment to keep the facility operational. Electrical power distribution losses,
including uninterruptible power supply (UPS) losses, represent a significant
12 percent of energy consumption and the last 3 percent is consumed by lighting.
In each of these areas, energy efficiency gains have a significant impact on
TCO and annual operating expenses, especially on high power, long life assets.
For example, let’s look at just a 1 percent efficiency improvement for a UPS
deployment for a 10 megawatt (MW) Data Center. As shown in the chart below,
while CapEx is fixed, the OpEx costs of a UPS over 10 years shows an operational
savings of $1.3 million with just an energy efficiency improvement of one percent
- from 95.5 to 96.5 percent.
As we can see in the picture above, lifetime costs can quickly exceed initial
investments. When budgeting for a new UPS, it’s crucial to account for the ongoing
Operating Expenses (OPEX) which usually represent between 60-75 % of the TCO.
Capital Expenses (CAPEX) instead are easily identifiable and comprise the initial
purchase price of the UPS, as well as the costs of installing the UPS, where it will
be housed (its physical footprint) and cooling requirements. The initial purchase
and installation costs account for between 25-40 % of the TCO.
Thanks to the historical knowledge of Data Center solutions, Legrand pays
attention to all life cycle costs generated by the UPS, allowing economic savings
over time and a TCO reduction.
The latest generation of Legrand UPS systems have a major impact on Operating
expenses, such as:
- Energy efficiency
- Maintenance and servicing
- Battery management
Different component of the energy used
Correlation between TCO and efficiency
- Component lifetime
- Serviceability
