GOING GREEN
Solar power is one of the most promising sources of
renewable energy due to its many advantages, such as
sustainability, long lifetime and low maintenance operation.
The initial cost of photovoltaic (PV) cells, however, is still
a significant barrier to the widespread adoption of this
technology. So, in order to compete with other forms of
power generation, a combination of reduced fabrication
costs and high solar cell efficiencies are required.
This barrier is even bigger for the data centre industry.
A large installation of solar panels is required to produce
only a fraction of the energy needed for any data centre.
For example, in the UK a 10kWp PV system consisting of 40
modules of monocrystalline silicon would need an area of
approximately 65m 2 plus batteries, if any. Extrapolating, to
produce 1MW about 4000 modules would be needed, taking
an area of 6500m2. It is widely thought that solar power
is too expensive for application at data centres, and the
current technology isn’t efficient enough to fulfil the power
consumption requirements of a data centre.
The investment required to install photovoltaic solar
panels is huge and it takes several years to recover
investments. On the other hand, while other carbon-based
power sources will continue to rise in price, solar power
is becoming more affordable in terms of initial cost and
payback time.
How solar energy is currently used in data centres
Some data centres around the world, for example Microsoft
in Singapore and Google in the Netherlands, buy renewable
energy from nearby solar farms. This not only reduces
the data centre’s carbon footprint but also supports the
investment made by the solar farm. There are still relatively
few solar farms that generate significant quantities of
electricity, so sometimes this may not even be an option.
Some facilities use on-site PV to supply a portion of
the site’s energy needs. The amount of land available
for solar panels is normally limited to the building’s roof
area, therefore the solar system can only generate a small
percentage of the total energy required by the data centre.
To produce enough energy for the whole site’s demand
would require a large area of panels and is unlikely to be
cost effective.
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