Blog Viewer

New solution for reducing CO2 from data centres and server rooms

By District Energy posted 09-28-2020 15:40

  

Mirage

Summary

Researchers at DTU will work with industrial companies to develop a new cooling and storage system for data centres and server rooms, which will be managed through artificial intelligence and reduce energy consumption and thus CO2 emissions.

Data centres and server rooms use electricity to operate their IT equipment and cool their servers. One large data centre alone can consume electricity corresponding to up to four percent of the total Danish electricity consumption, and that figure is expected to increase significantly as our internet consumption increases and creates the need for even more data centres (source: Danish Council on Climate Change). The electricity consumed by cooling data centres and server rooms is actually expected to increase so much that it will be difficult to cover with renewable energy. In addition, the excess heat from the servers is not being used at all, which is a must if we are to increase energy efficiency.

For these reasons, researchers at DTU Compute, DTU Civil Engineering and DTU Management have joined forces with industrial companies in a project to develop a new technical and flexible energy solution that can improve energy efficiency in data centres and server rooms by up to 80 per cent.

An important element of this work is the development of phase-change materials (PCMs), which are used, for example, to regulate the temperature in buildings. The researchers will develop PCMs for storing renewable energy that can be used to cool the server rooms, and that at the same time is integrated with the district-heating network to make use of waste heat and thereby reduce CO2 emissions in the digital sector.

The project, called ‘Cool Data,’ is a Grand Solution project supported by Innovation Fund Denmark with DKK 13 million.

Continue Reading


#News
#DistrictHeating
#DataCenter
#Danish
0 comments
5 views

Permalink