Energy Star closure impacts AI datacentre power

The US government is in the process of eliminating support for the Energy Star programme that was set up in 1992 to promote more energy efficient electronic equipment.

The initial focus 30 years ago was to tackle the power consumption of always on PCs and monitors. This has since expanded to cover over 50 home appliances, including heating ventilation and air conditioning systems (more on that later) and even door and windows with a standard launched this year.

However, the programme also hosts the 80plus scheme for efficiency of datacentre power supplies, and this is a key challenge for the entire planet.

An all hands meeting this week at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shared the details of the closure, says the Washington Post and CNN. The workforce changes at the EPA impact the Office of the Administrator, Office of Air and Radiation, which includes Energy Star, as well as the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), and Office of Water.

“With these organizational improvements, we recommit to fulfilling all of our statutory obligations and exceptionally delivering on EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment. This reorganization will bring much needed efficiencies to incorporate science into our rulemakings and sharply focus our work on providing the cleanest air, land, and water for our communities. It will also save at least $300 million annually for the American people,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

The US Chamber of Commerce; the Air Conditioning, Heating, & Refrigeration Institute, and the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers got wind of the closure in March this year and wrote to the US government, calling Energy Star “an example of an effective non-regulatory program and partnership between the government and the private sector.”

They released the letter this week as the prospect of the restructuring of the EPA. “Eliminating it will not serve the American people,” they wrote. “In fact, because the Energy Star brand is highly recognizable to consumers, it is likely that, should the program be eliminated, it will be supplanted by initiatives that drive results counter to the goals of this administration such as decreased features, functionality, performance, or increased costs.”

However semiconductor suppliers have driven the improvements in efficiency, particularly with the more recent wide bandgap semiconductor such as gallium nitride, and already tackled issues such as standby, or vampire, power.

“ENERGY STAR played a useful role in elevating efficiency in the public consciousness, but largely that ship has sailed,” said Doug Bailey, VP Marketing at Power Integrations. The company supplies power devices for a wide range of consumer equipment.

“Customers are much more knowledgeable now than they were, and are demanding sustainable solutions. Also, today they can have efficiency at no extra cost by using power supply ICs, from companies such as ourselves, which exceed ENERGY STAR regulations, delivering efficiency levels of 97% and above,” he said.

“We must also remember that ENERGY STAR is a voluntary standard. Globally there are even more stringent, mandatory standards in regions including China and Europe, and manufacturers will not want to produce a product with low performance that can only be sold in the USA.”

Energy Star is just one of many efficiency standards around the world. “Worldwide efficiency standards for appliances and HVAC systems such as SEER, MEPS, Energy Star and Top Runner are becoming increasingly stringent,” said Texas Instruments at the PCIM exhibition last year with the launch of an intelligent power module for air conditioning.

“The DRV7308 helps engineers meet these standards, leveraging GaN technology to deliver more than 99% efficiency and improve thermal performance, with 50% reduced power losses compared to existing solutions. In addition, the DRV7308 achieves industry-low dead time and low propagation delay, both less than 200ns, enabling higher pulse-width modulation (PWM) switching frequencies that reduce audible noise and system vibration. These advantages plus the higher power efficiency and integrated features of the DRV7308 also reduce motor heating, which can improve reliability and extend the lifetime of the system.”

Air conditioning is an increasingly important area for efficiency, as the power consumption for building heating and cooling is expected to grow 40% by 2030.

But over 30 years the focus has shifted from home systems, largely thanks to Energy Star, to the efficiency in datacentres. The power consumption is predicted to double by 2030 to 945TWh, so improving the efficiency is critical, given it is already a quarter of the 1768TWh global energy consumption today.

Standards from such as 80plus Platinum have driven up the efficiency of power supplies up to 90%, Titanium in 2012 to 94% with a low load requirement for the first time, and now the Ruby standard is taking that to 96.5%.

These are also hosted by Energy Star, but there is vested interest, and the funding from datacentre hyperscalers, to spin this out as an industry initiative.