Data Center Metering
Power management and distribution for data centers
The future is driven by in digital infrastructure to power AI and hyperscale data center growth. This shift brings new challenges for supplying energy intensive facilities reliability.
Data centers are one of the most energy intensive facilities in the world and must operate continuously to maintain high availability to power digital infrastructure. The emergence of AI technology, hyperscale cloud services, supercomputers, and other critical operations will drive the surge in demand. Every watt of power consumed within a data center will directly affect the efficiency, reliability and operation costs. This is why precise and continuous power monitoring is essential at every level of the electrical distribution network to provide a complete and comprehensive profile of energy utilization.
Power metering in data centers allow operators to have full visibility into energy usage, from the main utility all the way down to the individual server racks. With this insight, facilities can monitor the power usage effectiveness (PUE), identify losses and ensure balanced loading across all critical systems. The meters positioned at the utility side and UPS level support revenue grade accuracy and compliance reporting, while the branch and rack level metering will allocate energy costs, track performance and improve planning.
Having the right combination of metering across the utility feeds, UPS systems, cooling equipment and IT loads, data centers can achieve higher operational efficiency, enhance reliability, and meet sustainability goals.
Data Center Power Metering
Utility & Mains
The primary power entry into the data center facility, including the high voltage service transformer, switchgear and main distribution. Here accurate measurement is critical to establish a baseline for the energy usage and calculating overall facility efficiency, monitoring power quality to identify voltage/frequency disturbances for sensitive IT loads and ensuring that the utility supply is delivering as expected.
The Acuvim 3 is your Class A power quality analyzer, with class 0.1S accuracy for energy, IEC 61000-4-30 Class A compliant for power quality and waveform capture up to 512 samples/cycle. Whether you need to track energy, detect sags/swells, analyze harmonics to the 127th order, or trend feeder performance for imbalances, the Acuvim 3 is designed for mission critical environments.
Backup Power and UPS Distribution
This area will cover the uninterrupted power supply (UPS) output, backup generators, and critical distribution downstream of the UPS. Since IT loads must be continuously available, the distribution must be monitored with both load and health tracking (efficiency and losses).
The Acuvim II is designed for power and energy monitoring across low and medium voltage systems, which makes it ideal for UPS distribution and backup circuits where precision and communication flexibility is key. It has a compact design with class 0.1 accuracy, IEC 61000-4-30 Class S compliant for power quality, wide measurement range and extensive communication protocol support make it ideal for UPS and continuous operations within a data center.
PDU and Feeders
As power gets distributed from PDUs or RPPs to individual server racks and IT loads, continuous visibility becomes critical to maintain reliability and optimize usage. At this level detailed per circuit measurements are needed to monitor current loading, phase balance, energy usage per rack, support capacity planning and load forecasting.
The AcuRev 4100 is designed as a multi-circuit energy and power meter, ideal for PDUs and rack level subpanels that feed multiple branch circuits. With its compact size it allows for the monitor of up to 24 circuits simultaneously on one device which can drastically reduce the installation cost and panel space. The AcuRev 4100 is designed to be modular and can expand up to 96 channels.
AcuRev 4100 Advanced Multi-Channel Submeter
AcuDC 260 Advanced DC Meter
DC Distribution
Traditional data centers use only AC power distribution from the utility to IT racks. However, there has been an industry shift toward direct current (DC) distribution and high voltage DC architecture. New generation data centers with energy optimized designs are incorporating DC buses in parts of their distribution system such as between rectifiers, battery systems and inverters inside the UPS. DC busing is used to feed IT loads through DC compatible PDUs, and for renewable integration where solar or battery energy flows directly into the DC bus. Since DC distribution can remove multiple conversion stages, it can improve the system efficiency by 5-10%. Specialized DC metering is required to accurately monitor voltage, current, and power on the DC bus.
The AcuDC 260 provides accurate, revenue grade measurements at both main bus and feeder levels. With 1000V DC direct input, dual current channels and Class 0.5 accuracy, it delivers precise monitoring for power flow, energy usage and system balance.
The AcuDC 260 supports bi-directional measurements, Modbus RTU and Modbus TCP communications and has built-in data logging making it ideal for monitoring rectifier outputs, battery systems, and DC mains distribution.
Centralized Monitoring
Several different types of IIoT devices are often utilized within a data center across different networks. The size of data centers can range from small to large deployment of devices requiring data and device management monitoring to be aggregated from one central hub for energy analysis and system integration. The AcuHMI consolidates data from multiple power meters and sensor into one device. Combined with a gateway, it supports Modbus RTU, Modbus TCP, BACnet MSTP and BACnet IP interoperability for downstream devices, displaying real time voltage, current, power and energy measurements for all connected meters and includes a 7-inch colour touchscreen for intuitive operators to monitor power data and alarms locally at the electrical room, PDU or rack level.
It supports 32GB of on-board memory for device data logging and has built in gateway capabilities to send data to BMS/DCIM.
