Cisco Catalyst Center User Guide, Release 3.1.x

Overview

Catalyst Center offers a range of energy management capabilities that are designed to help organizations optimize their energy usage, reduce costs, and improve sustainability. Catalyst Center energy management solutions offer these key features:

Cost optimization: You can regularly review energy consumption data and adjust strategies for cost savings.
Sustainability: The energy management capabilities help you support your sustainability initiatives by reducing your carbon footprint through efficient energy use.
Assess high-consumption devices: Catalyst Center provides energy audit to identify high-consumption devices and patterns. This assessment helps you replace outdated network devices with energy-efficient models.
Reporting and analytics: Catalyst Center provides detailed reports and analytics on energy usage. Use them to identify trends, track savings, and support sustainability initiatives.

Manage energy on network devices

Use Energy Management to monitor the cost, energy consumption, and carbon emissions of your network.

This section explains the options available in the Energy Management window.

Procedure

Step 1

From the main menu, choose Energy Management.

Catalyst Center displays energy consumption for all network devices for the last 24 hours by default.

Important

Data and other information generated in this dashboard are subject to the disclaimer provided in the Disclaimer slide-in pane. Click the View Disclaimer link to view this pane.

This image displays Energy Management window view.

Step 2

Choose a site from the Global drop-down list to view its energy consumption.

Step 3

You can view energy consumption for the last 24 hours or seven days. To change the time range, choose 7 Days from the 24 Hours drop-down list and click Apply.

You can also change the date and time in the Start Time and End Time area to view the energy consumption for a specific day or week.

Step 4

To view the energy consumption of the switches, routers, access points, or other Power over Ethernet (PoE) devices, choose the device type from the All Devices drop-down list.

Step 5

Enable the Auto refresh data toggle button to refresh data on the Energy Management window.

Data refreshes every 5 minutes. Click the pause button to temporarily stop data refresh.

Step 6

Click Show site details button to view detailed information for all sites.

You can view carbon intensity, energy consumption, estimated emissions, and the estimated cost for all sites.

This image shows the site details view in Energy Management window.

You can compare values between different sites in this table. To view details such as energy consumption, carbon intensity, estimated emissions, and consumption costs for the buildings and floors of a site, click the site name hyperlink.

Click the map view icon () to display the sites on a map. To view details such as energy consumption, carbon intensity, emissions, and estimated consumption cost, hover over a site.

Use the Energy Management dashboard

This section describes the components of the Energy Management dashboard:

Shows the Energy Management dashboard view.

Total energy consumption: This dashlet displays the amount of energy consumed by the devices for a chosen site and time range.
Energy consumption by device type: This dashlet displays the energy consumed by each device type for a chosen site and time range.
Estimated cost and emissions:
- Estimated cost: Displays the estimated cost of the energy consumed based on the Electricity Maps (if available) or the International Energy Agency (IEA) data.
- Estimated emissions: Displays carbon emissions of the energy consumed in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (kgCO2e).

Savings: This dashlet displays the energy savings, cost savings, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Note

You can view savings achieved only through APs operating in power save mode.

For information on how to configure APs in power save mode on Catalyst Center, see Create an AP power profile.

Energy consumption trend: Displays the trend of energy consumed over a range of time. Click the toggle button to view energy consumption trends for all devices or by device type.
Emissions trend: Displays the trend of carbon emissions for the chosen devices over a range of time.
Carbon intensity trend: Displays the trend of carbon intensity over a range of time. Carbon intensity refers to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions produced per unit of energy output.

Click the Energy consumption, Carbon emissions, Savings, and Comparison tabs to view detailed information for each category.

Generate a report of energy management for network devices

Catalyst Center provides a consolidated energy management report. The report shows energy consumption, cost, carbon emissions, and the carbon intensity data of your network devices.

For more information, see "Run a Network Devices Report" in the Cisco Catalyst Center Platform User Guide.

View energy consumption of network devices

Catalyst Center allows you to assess the energy consumption of network devices. Use this assessment to manage operational costs and reduce environmental impact.

The factors that affect energy consumption in network devices include:

Device Type: Switches, routers, APs, and other PoE devices, each having different energy requirements.
Usage Patterns: Devices operating at full capacity or under significant load typically consume more energy.
Environmental Conditions: Operating temperature and humidity can affect energy usage.

From the main menu, choose Energy Management > Energy consumption.

The Energy Consumption dashboard includes these sections:

Energy consumption by device type displays the total energy consumption for all devices and individual device types.
From the All Devices drop-down list, choose the device type to view the energy consumption for device series.
The table lists all the devices and provides information such as device type, device series, the site, and the energy consumed by the device.
Energy consumption trend displays a graphical representation of energy consumed over a time range.
Device count displays the total number of devices and the number of devices based on device type over a time range. This graph displays only the number of devices that report energy data. The device count excludes devices that do not report energy data.

Carbon emissions of network devices

Carbon emissions are the release of carbon—especially carbon dioxide (CO₂)—into the atmosphere. These emissions significantly contribute to climate change by increasing the greenhouse effect. This results in global warming and various environmental impacts.

The Energy Management feature provides estimated carbon emissions data for your network devices and gives insights over a selected time range.

Displays the carbon emission dashboard view.

To view the carbon emissions dashboard, click the menu icon in the top-left corner. Then choose Energy Management > Carbon emissions. The dashboard displays these sections:

Estimated total emissions: This dashlet displays the estimated greenhouse gas emissions, specifically carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalents, based on energy consumption and the carbon intensity of the local energy grid.
Energy mix: This dashlet displays energy generated from different sources, such as gas power plants, nuclear power plants, hydroelectric dams, wind discharge, and battery discharge.

Electricity generation, especially when using fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas, is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions including CO₂.

Nuclear power plants, hydroelectric dams, and wind turbines are clean electricity sources with zero to negligible carbon emissions. These sources appear in shades of green. Electricity from gas power plants is shown in shades of red to indicate its higher carbon footprint. Sources in gray show electricity from unknown sources.
Emissions trend: This area displays a graphical representation of the carbon emissions and carbon intensity over a time range.

View energy savings

The Energy Management Savings dashboard shows the estimated cost and energy savings, and the estimated reduction of gas emissions when power-save mode is applied to APs.

From the main menu, choose Energy Management > Savings to monitor and analyze savings.

Note

The dashboard captures only the savings achieved when APs operate in power-save mode.

For information on how to configure APs in power-save mode on Catalyst Center, see Create an AP power profile.

The Savings dashboard contains these sections:

Estimated cost savings: This area displays the estimated cost savings achieved due to the reduced energy consumption. It also displays a graph showing the money spent over a period of time.
Estimated energy savings: This area displays the estimated energy savings achieved in watt-hours (Wh). You can configure APs to operate in normal mode or in power-save mode. The savings value is calculated by subtracting the energy consumed in power-save mode from the energy consumed in normal mode. This savings is calculated based on live, switch-reported energy consumption.

This metric is more granular than the Assurance > PoE dashboard > Estimated AP Power Savings value, which is based on power samples. In the PoE dashboard, Assurance samples the data once per hour and calculates energy consumption from these samples. This provides a higher-level approximation than the energy savings displayed in the Energy Management window.
Estimated greenhouse gas emissions reduced: Energy consumption often leads to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This area displays the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases reduced due to decreased energy consumption.
Reducing GHG emissions contributes to mitigating climate change and improving air quality.

Compare energy across sites

To analyze energy across your network, Catalyst Center ranks sites by energy consumption, estimated emissions, cost, and carbon emissions intensity.

From the main menu, choose Energy Management > Comparison.

Compares sites by energy consumption, cost and carbon intensity.

The Comparison dashboard ranks sites by energy consumption, estimated emissions, cost, and carbon emissions intensity. To view the site details for a specific rank, click the corresponding link.