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http://www.dcseurope.info/n/xqht
The EU dream of renewable-powered data centres with smart-city addresses
The European Union EU has put tens of millions of euros behind a number of research projects to investigate the touch-points between smart cities, data centres and renewables. The research also includes funding and input from companies including ABB, HP, IBM, Siemens and Eaton. The projects are focused on finding ways to use smart technologies to improve the efficiency of cities and data centres, while simultaneously making renewables a greater proportion of the total energy consumed. By Andrew Donoghue, Senior analyst, Datacenter Techologies, 451 Research.
THE RESEARCH is looking at existing technologies as well as newer ones. Some of the efficiency technologies in question are already proven, such as redirecting waste heat from data centres into district heating systems. But others are still emerging, like scheduling data centre workloads to coincide with the availability of renewable energy.
The EU is looking for additional industry input into these projects to provide oversight, but also to collaborate on the commercialization of the technology and research that results.
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www.dcseurope.info I November 2013
Exploring the potential synergies between data centres and smart cities makes sense, given that both types of infrastructure are endeavouring to become smarter.
The increasing use of sensors and meters, and the rise of the Internet of things – where all these monitoring devices are given an IP address – should help to accelerate this process. Where renewables fit into this picture is less clear, given that much large-scale renewable production now takes place well away from urban centres.
However, smaller-scale, on-site generation – through the use of fuel cells (not strictly renewable, however), wind or solar – could increase in urban areas, and it is interesting to consider how these so-called micro-grids could impact both data centre design and operation, as well as the development of smarter cities.
The wiser greybeards in the data centre industry may be sceptical and bemused by some of these projects, but the EU is looking into the blue skies. In some areas, it has already proved surprisingly prescient.
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