An apparatus comprising a receiver configured to receive a plurality of power measurements from a plurality of power sensors, and a processor coupled to the receiver and configured to determine an amount of power used by a processing element in a data center by determining a summation of the plurality of power measurements, determine a data to Watt ratio that indicates an amount of data that may be processed by the processing element per unit of power used, determine an estimated execution time for processing the amount of data by the processing element, and determine an estimated energy consumption that indicates an amount of energy to be used by the processing element to process the amount of data.