Google is a total champ when it comes to its infrastructure, and a blog post Monday shows the search giant is running its data centres at a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.14. So, in Google’s case, its data centres only use 14% more power for everything that isn’t the servers.

But wait, is that right? Google later in the post claims that the version of PUE that gives it the 1.14 ranking is more comprehensive than others tends to use. Google tosses in power lost to AC/DC conversions, cooling offices associated with the data centre and other bits and pieces. Counting only the servers and the air conditioning gives Google a PUE of 1.06. So why might this matter? Well, PUE is the metric to beat in the race to greener data centres, and Google may have just beat Facebook’s Prineville data centre by a tenth of a percent.

Source: Gigaom