Power usage effectiveness

Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a measure of how efficiently a computer data center uses its power; specifically, how much of the power is actually used by the computing equipment (in contrast to cooling and other overhead).

PUE is the ratio of total amount of power used by a computer data center facility to the power delivered to computing equipment.

PUE was developed by a consortium called The Green Grid. PUE is the inverse of data center infrastructure efficiency (DCiE). An ideal PUE is 1.0. Anything that isn't considered a computing device in a data center (i.e. lighting, cooling, etc.) falls into the category of facility power usage.

$\mathrm{PUE} = {\mbox{Total facility power} \over \mbox{IT equipment power}}$

See also

• Data center infrastructure efficiency
• Performance per watt
• Green power usage effectiveness
• Green computing
• IT energy management