This is the first post of several, whereby I will discuss the production of a energy monitoring system for enterprise networks. At the end of this series I will post the scripts I have written to measure energy usage. If you have the fortitude, I would be honoured if you could read these posts.
Summary
Energy consumption continues to increase. Information technology (IT) now uses more electricity than most Countries. China and the United States are the only countries in the world that use more energy than the IT sector. 80% of global energy demand is still met by fossil fuels. Which produces large volumes of carbon dioxide CO2. The environmental impact of the increase in CO2 impacting the climate. Climate change is consistently on the agenda, for example climate change has been on agenda G7 meetings for several years. Global energy prices have grown and to continue to grow.
Environmental and bottom line costs of energy should be of concern to the sector. The IT sector needs tools to measure and manage energy consumption.
The aim of this blog is to design, build and test a on-premise energy monitoring platform. The platform developed as part of this project could to be used by organisations to monitor electricity consumption. The platform would uniquely measure energy usage for all Internet Protocol (IP) devices. Information presented on a website in graphical form.
This blog will investigate current energy monitoring tools within the market place. I will collate and summarise current literature on energy monitoring. Re-search through interviews and questionnaires will be conducted to better understand customer needs. This research will be used in the design of the solution.
I will try to post weekly, and will write blogs under the following headings
Future posts will investigate use of electricity, focusing on information technology (IT) electricity usage within organisations. They will discuss existing electricity energy consumption, existing energy monitoring products and develop a new “Black Box” energy monitoring platform.
Post 1 – Introduction, this chapter will introduce the topic of energy and common terminology used to describe electrical energy. The chapter will then discuss electrical energy consumption and costs. This section will start focusing on the Information Technology (IT) sector and the motivation for this project.
Post 2 – Literature and Market Review, this chapter will summarise existing literature on energy monitoring within domestic and non-domestic environments. Review existing energy monitoring tools in the market and identify the functionalities and limitations of these tools. This section will identify design and implementation lessons from this market review and look to use this information within the design principles section.
Post 3 – Original Research through Questionnaires and Interviews. I conducted original research through a questionnaire. This section will detail the survey purpose, methodology and responses. Summerised responses will be used to support the design principles section.
Post 4 – Project Proposal. This section will look at the design challenge and specific design principles. These design principles will be used to inform choices of technologies, approach and milestones.
Post 5 – Proof Of Concept (PoC). This section will build a virtual test environment to prove that a polling agent is able to poll devices and display statistics on a website. The PoC will provide confidence that the technologies chosen are fit for purpose, test initial scripts and decide on specific energy reporting visualisation standards.
Post 6 – Testing The solution Within A Lab. This section will detail the implementation of the solution within a physical laboratory environment. The physical environment is being provided by a 3rd party company (Greengage). The purpose of this environment is to prove the installation process, test energy monitoring, and validate energy reporting.
Post 7 – Conclusion. This section will reflect on the state of energy monitoring within the IT sector. Evaluate the energy monitoring tool produced as part of this project. Discuss areas for future technical development for the energy monitoring tool. This section will also look at an opportunity to commercialise this solution.