of supply whilst minimising costs for consumers and keeping within legally binding CO2 reduction targets. Improving energy efficiency by 50 percent will become an essential part of the solution. The Carbon Reduction Commitment was introduced in April 2010 in an attempt to force large commercial consumers to focus on improved efficiency. Unfortunately the motivational impact of this scheme was reduced when the Government, short of money, turned it into a direct tax. Given the challenging energy
situation Alquist have been working with forward thinking UK data centres to help them monitor and then reduce energy consumption by 25 percent. Data centres currently consume 3 percent of the UK’s base generation capacity, forecast to rise to 6 percent by 2020. Data centres are one of the few industries with growing electricity
demand despite the tough economic climate. Data centres consume huge amounts
of power and are typically maintained at temperatures around 18-22°C. Often the whole space is overcooled to manage issues in relatively small problem areas. Data centre temperature and humidity levels were originally set to prevent punched cards from sticking together. Computer technology has drastically changed over the last 40 years but the operating temperature of the data centre has remained largely unaltered. 2011 ASHRAE guidelines allow a much wider operating range extending up to 35°C. Some data centres run at these higher temperatures today although they use custom built hardware. In order to reduce energy costs general purpose data centres are starting to increase operating temperatures. For every 1°C the temperature can be raised around 5
percent of energy can be saved thanks to lower cooling costs. Data centres are targeting a 5°C rise to achieve savings of 25 percent.
Conclusion Data centres are rightly risk
averse and any change in operating temperatures must be carefully monitored. Alquist’s Celsius monitoring system uses fibre optic cables to monitor temperature in high definition across the whole data centre. Problem areas can be identified and local solutions applied to improve performance. The EU code of conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency describes many of the best practice techniques that should be implemented in all data centres to reduce energy consumption.
IT INFRASTRUCTURE
SOFTWARE & SERVICES
www.rittal.co.uk
07.02.2012 11:26:12
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