Is ambient cooling overtaking
compressor technology for data
centre temperature control?
Tim Bound, Director
at Transtherm Cooling
Industries, explores
the evolving role
of ambient cooling
technologies in keeping
energy costs low in data
centre applications.
A
s demand for data collection,
storage and exchange multiplies at
an unprecedented rate, experts are
concerned that the energy consumption
of data centre infrastructure is becoming
an increasing drain on the world’s energy
resources. In an era where on an annual
basis, data centres in the United States
alone consume the entire output of 34
of the world’s largest power stations,
methods of conserving and reducing the
energy input of some of the globes most
socially and economically critical buildings
is more important than ever.
By 2020 the UK will be the largest single
market in Europe for data centres and
analysts predict this will cost the industry
up to £7 billion per year in energy alone.
Disclosure of data centre energy and
carbon performance metrics is now driving
change in a sector where the potential
energy savings could comfortably sit in the
hundreds-of-millions.
There are a number of ways to deliver power
savings in data centres, from optimising
renewable energy sources, to updating
the physical infrastructure of the building,
investing in modern server technology with
lower heat emissions, or carefully specifying
the right cooling equipment.
Why is ambient cooling technology
increasing in popularity?
Historically, data centres have been
cooled using compressor or refrigerated
technology, often with an adiabatic cooler
installed to dissipate the heat generated
by the compressor. The performance
of this conventional chilling technology
has serviced the mission critical data
centre sector well thus far, but change is
definitely afoot.
There is a distinct shift in popularity from
traditional compressor based chilling
methods to far more energy efficient
ambient cooling technologies, with a
particular focus on adiabatic solutions
due to its retrofitting capabilities
compared to other ambient systems such
as direct evaporative or heat exchanger
technology. Why?
The two main drivers for change are a
surge in investment in the construction
of new or extended data centres, plus a
significant improvement in the operating
parameters of server technology.
Tim Bound, Director at Transtherm
Cooling Industries
54
Issue 03
The global data centre construction market
is estimated to grow from US$14.59bn
in 2014 to US $22.73bn by 2019, at a
Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)
of 9.3%. This thriving market growth is
down to many companies transforming
traditional facilities into mega data centres
and others planning to build new ‘monster
sites’ in the coming years.
With modernisation, comes state-of-the-
art server technology which is capable
of withstanding higher temperatures
while maintaining optimised performance
and reliability.
The modernisation of legacy data centre
infrastructure, the increased construction
of new ultra-modern sites and the
widespread adoption of more temperature
resilient servers has driven a desire for
compressor-less cooling, choosing the
energy efficient benefits of ambient
cooling technologies instead.
Why is this happening now?
Historically, ambient cooling equipment
has been unable to cool data centres to
within the right temperature range, which
created an industry reliant on refrigerated
or compressor led solutions.
Now, thanks to more adaptive build
methods and the marginal, but
vital, increase in server temperature
resilience, the temperature parameters
of data centres has risen to a range
which ambient cooling technology can
comfortably achieve.
In other words, instead of cooling the
compressor, adiabatic equipment is now
directly cooling the data centre equipment
itself. This is reducing CAPEX expenditure
by eradicating an entire chiller from many
new build specifications.
Why is this a more energy
efficient solution?
Adiabatic and other ambient cooling
equipment achieves lower Energy
Efficiency Ratios (EER) than compressor-
based chillers. Take the example of a
typical compressor chiller which will
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