What is PUE?

PUE stands for Power Use Effectiveness. PUE is a measure of how efficiently power is being used in a data center, and is becoming the standard benchmarking metric in most data centers. PUE is determined by dividing the total facility power use (Building Watts) by the IT equipment load (IT Watts). The power distribution within the building has several points where losses occur (UPS, transformers, wire runs), so the ideal place to measure the IT power load is at the cabinet level within the power strip. These readings can be collected and aggregated to determine the IT power load. Once an initial assessment of PUE has been made, efforts can be made to improve PUE by applying various methods to improve operational efficiencies in the data center.