Smart and Green Cooling Techniques for Data Centers

Smart and green. Two words that seem to echo in every global enterprise today. So, it is not surprise that even data centers promise to become more energy efficient by power saving and smart cooling.  The concept has already gone viral. The need for lowering investment, operational cost, and environmental impact has propelled the need for energy efficient data centers.

In the last decade, the power dissipation from a microprocessor has increased by a factor of 10 and on average, a single microprocessor dissipates 100W and the power density comes around 40W/cm2. This can increase up to 200 W/cm2 these days. Just imagine the power dissipation at data centers with high computer density! All these have posed the need for cooling solutions of very low thermal resistance. What can be done to reduce the energy for cooling data centers, while ensuring data center and cooling system reliability? How can the smart cooling strategy lower investment costs?

The answer may be to focus on the total cost of ownership.  This means the focus is on free cooling technologies, evaporating and green cooling approaches, judicious management of data center cooling, etc. Companies should also consider efficient modeling of temperature distribution and airflows/ air inlets at data centers, utilize the low grade waste heat from computers, and use alternate energy sources like fuel cells for powering computers instead of relying merely on energy utilities of the area.  This will lead to an efficient data center cost model, which can drastically reduce the overall energy consumption and data center power costs. Improving the energy efficiency by using cheap, stored cold surface water or cold air relating to seasonal or daily fluctuation offers yet another way to reduce the Power Usage Efficiency (PUE), operational expenditures and total ownership costs. There are also innovative concepts like Green Cooling of Data Centers, Kyotocooling etc.

Are you ready to go green and smart in your data center?

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.