Danfoss Shares Analysis and Experience on Knowledge Middle Greatest Practices

Danfoss has launched a brand new paper, “Knowledge Facilities and Vitality: Reaching Sustainability,” centered on designing and managing sustainable knowledge facilities. Half prognosis, half roadmap, and half inspiration to fulfill the sustainability take a look at, it gives a sturdy framework for growing greatest practices for knowledge middle design and administration.

As knowledge facilities develop in measurement and quantity, their vitality utilization and carbon emissions are additionally forecast to develop. With the push towards decarbonization to fulfill the targets of the Paris Settlement, it’s crucial that the information middle business implement energy-efficient and carbon-neutral cooling options. Knowledge facilities may even must discover holistic methods to be a part of a sustainable group infrastructure. As Scott Foster, former director of sustainable vitality on the United Nations and at the moment a senior fellow at Boston College and senior advisor with the Enniscorthy Discussion board, writes within the foreword:

“The digital financial system is quick, ever rising, ever evolving, and ever extra advanced and vitality intensive. Progress interprets into knowledge administration being a supply of a rising proportion of rising whole greenhouse fuel emissions. With international atmospheric temperatures already breaching the 1.5°C goal and no clear peak in sight, such a potent and vital supply of recent emissions can’t be ignored.”

Following an government abstract by Jakob Jul Jensen, head of knowledge middle options at Danfoss, the paper explores totally different approaches to knowledge middle cooling, the prices of vitality inefficiency, how elevated vitality effectivity can change into a supply of revenue for knowledge facilities and the way latest laws such because the Inflation Discount Act is offering incentives for a inexperienced transition within the knowledge middle business. Matters lined embody the intersection of carbon, water and vitality when evaluating knowledge middle efficiency, the economics of sustainable knowledge facilities and the infrastructure wanted for a real inexperienced transition.

The paper additionally emphasizes that knowledge facilities can transcend implementing superior sustainable cooling options; they’ll change into valued contributors to group vitality programs the place their warmth will be captured and reused by different buildings:

“Considered from a group vitality standpoint, then, knowledge middle extra warmth will be a part of a holistic system offering group vitality providers. The warmth created by knowledge facilities will be deployed to warmth buildings, warmth water, and supply warmth to different processes needing it. Knowledge middle warmth vitality will be saved in quite a lot of methods and used as wanted to offset focused electrical energy purposes, particularly throughout peak load hours, or to cut back the ability load persistently all through the day by changing the necessity for electrical energy at a discrete location.”

The paper acknowledges that this may require extra investments in infrastructure, however as North America seems to lower carbon emissions and scale back vitality consumption, knowledge facilities warmth reuse represents a possible answer to constructing a sustainable future.

As a part of its dedication to serving to construct sustainable knowledge facilities via collaboration and the sharing of greatest practices from main researchers, in September of 2023 Danfoss joined forces with Google, Microsoft and Schneider Electrical to launch a Pan-European Internet Zero Innovation Hub. The Hub will convey collectively key stakeholders within the European knowledge middle sector, together with regulators, researchers, operators, utility suppliers, NGOs, and grid/community providers, with the aim of growing concrete options to speed up the inexperienced transition of knowledge facilities.