DCEP case studies
DCEP · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The Data Center Energy Practitioner (DCEP) Program is a professional credential for people who assess and improve energy performance in data centers - energy managers, facilities and mechanical engineers, commissioning agents, and efficiency consultants. This independent study page is built around five practice domains: data center energy efficiency assessment; IT equipment and workload management; cooling systems and airflow management; electrical power distribution and efficiency; and energy metrics, benchmarking, and reporting. Each domain is weighted evenly here because the program's official domain weights could not be confirmed. Coverage emphasizes the practical judgment an assessor needs: scoping an assessment, interpreting nameplate and measured load data, evaluating airflow and cooling configurations, tracing electrical losses from utility service to the rack, and turning measurements into defensible metrics and reports. The DCEP case studies are 5 cases and about 1,744 words.
1PUE Drift After a Partial Load Migration
A 1.8 MW IT load colocation hall reports annual PUE of 1.42 two years ago and 1.55 last year. The facility team blames hotter summers.
386 words, about 2 min2Hot Aisle Containment in a Mixed-Density Hall
A 600 kW hall has 12 rows of cabinets. Eight rows run 4-6 kW per rack; four rows were recently populated with 15 kW GPU nodes.
378 words, about 2 min3UPS Loading and Redundancy Trade-off
A data hall draws 900 kW of IT load through a 2N UPS configuration. Each UPS string is rated 1000 kW and currently carries about 45% load, with the other string idle but energized.
338 words, about 2 min4Workload Placement Versus Cooling Reality
An enterprise runs a 1.2 MW data center with 60% average utilization. Batch analytics jobs are scheduled at night on whatever servers are free, spreading load across the hall.
329 words, about 2 min5Choosing a Benchmark When Metrics Disagree
A 2.5 MW facility reports PUE 1.38, but its DCiE equivalent is about 72%. The operator also computes a partial PUE excluding UPS losses, which gives 1.30.
313 words, about 2 min