Uncanny. I just read your afterthought in the uplink, which I think is addressed in large part in my previous post of five or ten minutes ago.
re: ".. but I wonder if that's so: I wonder if engineers are calculating the effect of say, 1000 PCs and their associated equipment, in an office building?"
Yes, they do, and they add a contingency factor for growth to that amount, too. Power calculating and BTU conversions are now parts of the software that is routinely used by the larger (and some not so large) MEP firms, i.e., the mechanical, environmental and power engineers, to compute such metrics.
The automated facilities management systems used for this usually contain libraries of all popular (customizable, as well) hardware devices and platforms, which makes automated lookups and computations feasible, on the fly. For all three: power, temperature and footprint requirements. We've even used such systems (which also track real estate square footage) on the cost side of P&L systems associated with commisions for trading desks for several of our clients, since the number of "machines" and the power they consume (as well as the real estate occupied, and the entitlements exercised for market data feeds such as Reuters, ADP, etc.) are directly related to the end-of-day bottom line. |
